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HARD SAYINGS.
ROEHAMPTON I
PRINTED BY JOHN GRIFFIN.
[All rights reserved.]

HARD SAYINGS
A SELECTION OF MEDITATIONS AND STUDIES
GEORGE TYRRELL, SJ,

AUTHOR OF "
NOVA ET VETERA."
Durus est hie sermo, et quis potest eum audire?"

Joan. vi. 61.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1898
IKUbtl bstat ;
GULIELMUS ROCHE, S.J.,

Censor Deputatus.
Imprimatur :
HERBERTUS CARD. VAUGHAN,

Archiep. Westmonast.
THE Author wishes to thank those who have
in various ways helped him in the task of
producing the present volume; and more especially

Mr. C. Kegan Paul, who kindly read through the
proofs.
INTRODUCTION.
ALTHOUGH the following conferences and medita

tions were in no way originally designed to be parts
of a whole, written, as they were, at sundry times
and in divers manners, yet there has been some
imperfect attempt at method in their selection and
arrangement which, though not very apparent on
the surface, may make itself felt in the unity of
their effect upon the reader s mind. Their purport

is to illustrate and, so to say, turn over in various
ways a very few of the deepest and most wide-

reaching principles of Catholic Christianity, by
which they are pervaded and upon which they have
been built up with a somewhat dialectical severity
which can hardly escape unfavourable criticism, as
seeming to encourage an excessive rationalizing in
matters too delicate for the coarse hands of the
logician. The writer has had this danger con
tinually before his mind as something to guard

against, but since his aim has been confessedly to
simplify, explain, and co-ordinate, it would be too

INTRODUCTION.
much hope that he has avoided all the errors and

to
extremes which usually beset such an undertaking.

For indeed there is a most unpardonable narrow
ness as well as impertinence in the desire to repre
sent the intercourse between the created spirit and
its indwelling Creator in terms as sharp and exact
as those which describe the dealings of father and
son. master and servant, ruler and subject, husband
and spouse. These familiar relationships bear a
distant analogy to those subsisting between God
and the soul, but fall immeasurably short of the
reality. They are as a few rough, suggestive strokes
drawn by a skilful hand, which will serve to bring

to our mind all the meaning and expression of a
face if onlyit be already familiar to us by experi
ence. But an inordinate love of clearness, an over-
pressing of analogies and similitudes is a form of
rationalism very fruitful in fallacies, and not very

uncommon in ascetical writings. If, however, we
use these metaphors with a full reflex conscious
ness of their imperfection, then indeed we may do
so fearlessly and abundantly, trusting that where
one is weak another may be strong, and that from
many adumbrations some vague image of the
faulty
whole truth may shape itself in the mind.
What we have to guard against is the narrow
pride of that rationalism which inclines some to be
impatient of all ideas that are in any way obscure

INTRODUCTION.
and imperfectly defined ;

to cast out of the mind as
worthless those that are not clear and distinct ; to
apply the methods and criteria of the "exact
sciences" to matters of a wholly different order;

to be abhorrent of all that savours of mysticism.
For this is to forget that every new idea that enters

our soul, so far as it is new and incomparable, and
unlike what we have previously known, is fringed
with mystery, and is only very gradually defined and
analyzed as to its full contents ; it is to ignore the
simple fact that our mind comprehends fully only

what it has itself created forms and numbers, and
figures and relations ;
and that of the least atom of
God s can at best grasp a side or a surface
creations it
or a corner, but can penetrate nothing. Still more
evident is it that most of the truths relating to the

commerce of God with the soul are necessarily
veiled, and obscure to us in our present embodied
condition, since they can never be properly ex
pressed in terms of anything that falls under our

senses in terms of the language we are
only
skilled in. Ultimate truths, those which are con
cerned with the Alpha and Omega of our existence,
are from their very nature set at the extreme limit
of our intellectual horizon, so that we never see all
round them or beyond them. Our mind is made

for what lies between for movements and processes
:
and the laws by which they are governed ;

but
INTRODUCTION.
before the
"
Ultimates," the unchanging realities of

the timeless, spaceless world, whose existence is
postulated in our every thought, our progress is

abruptly arrested as by a dead wall, behind which
all impenetrable mystery
is Hitherto shalt thou :
"
come and no further, and here shalt thou break thy

waves."
swelling
Yet these are the truths most essential to our
spiritual life, and ignorance of which is chiefly to

be deplored. They are, moreover, truths for which
man has by nature a most insatiable intellectual
curiosity that breaks out everywhere, even in the
most barbaric and uncultivated minds ;
and yet with
regard to which he is as helpless, as much in need
of God, as the babe is of its mother s breast ;

and
if his craving for the mysterious, the wonderful, the
supernatural, be not fed by true religion, it will feed
itself on the garbage of any superstition that is
offered to it.
Indeed, the soul will never be raised higher or

further strengthened by any truth which it has once
thoroughly penetrated or comprehended, and which

therefore retains for it no element of mystery or
wonder, for it is only by straining to comprehend
what exceeds its present grasp that it grows great.
Mysticism deals with such half-veiled, half-
revealed truths as we speak of. There is no doubt

a false mysticism which values obscurity for its
INTRODUCTION. xi
own sake, and wraps up the simplest truisms of

till they loom great
morality in clouds of confusion
and mysterious ;
and which on this score lays claim
to special gnosis and prophetic insight. But this
child of affectation, or self-delusion, or ignorance, no

more discredits the true mysticism of a Kempis or
of St. Teresa, than spiritualism discredits spirits,
or jugglery discredits the miracles of Christ.
Having thus insisted on the reasonableness and

necessity of mysticism, as opposed to crude rational
ism and to the non-sense of soi-disant "common
sense
"
in spiritual things, we must equally insist on

the importance of using all the light and help that
reason rightly used affords us in these matters of ;
recognizing here, as elsewhere, progress and develop

ment in our understanding of Divine truth (itself
unchanging) a progress in distinctness and coher

ence of idea and statement ; a continual and faithful
retranslation of the words and forms of one age or
country into those of another; an adaptation of
immutable principles, to the ever mutable circum
stances of human life. For where this work is
and conceptions of a former

neglected, the language
generation become, first, tasteless and common
place and then distasteful and repugnant to the
;
changing fashions of thought and speech in

succeeding generations except in the case of those
rare works of genius and inspiration which, like
INTRODUCTION.
the Scriptures or the Imitation, are catholic and

eternal.
Thus much, then, in justification of what might

seem to be a too dialectical treatment of subjects
to a great extent beyond the reach of so rude a
method.
Again, the writer may be reproached with
a certain indecency and irreverence in attempting
to make bare to the public gaze many of those
deeper mysteries of our holy religion which the

instinct of more delicate minds has ever hidden in
a language
"
not understanded of the people."

This
discipline arcani the Church has learnt from her
Divine Master, whose parables were "words to the

wise," mercifully veiling from the many the light
which they could not bear, and which would have
been only to their ruin and not to their resurrection.
Also there is a sacred duty of guarding the higher
truths of the Eternal Kingdom from the profana
tion of being discussed, perhaps ridiculed and

blasphemed by those whose minds and hearts are
void of the whence a sympathetic
first principles
understanding of them might be evolved. As it is,

there is scarce a hireling journalist who is not as
ready with his flippant criticisms on the mysteries

of the Kingdom of God as he is with those on
is
political or scientific or literary topics. Nothing
sacred from his omniscient pen. Is it then season-
INTRODUCTION.
able thus to cast pearls before those who will but
trample them under foot and turn again and

rend us ?
If after some hesitation the writer has deter
mined to face the possibility of such ill-conse
quences, it has been from a conviction that it is
rather through an insight into the high and all-
satisfying ethical conceptions of the

Catholic religion
that men are than through any

drawn to embrace it
more speculative considerations. Loquere ad COY

populi hujus Speak unto the heart of this people,
was the Prophet s commission nor can it be denied ;
that it was because He knew what was in man that
Christ had such irresistible power over the hearts of

men ; anywhere knowledge is power. So
for here if
there is nothing that establishes and confirms our
implicit faith in the Catholic religion of Christ

more
than the clear conviction that she alone knows what
is in man, and holds the secrets of life s problems ;
that she alone has balm for the healing of the

nations ;
that she alone can answer firmly and
infallibly what all are asking, with an answer harsh

at sounding, and austere, but on reflection kind
first
and consolatory, and, like the "hard sayings" of

her Master, "
full of grace and truth."
It is not till men s hearts are deeply drawn

towards the Church for one reason or another,
that their minds are sufficiently freed from the
xiv INTRODUCTION.
natural bias against a creed so exacting and

imperious in many ways, to make them desirous
or capable of listening to her claims.
For this reason, therefore, it is to the heart \ve
must make our first appeal, by bringing together as
far as we can those various truths which embody
the Church s explanation of life
by as we find it ;
showing their mutual bearings, their harmony with

one another, and with the stern facts they deal with
and explain. If the Church has an answer which
will give a meaning to pain and temptation and sin
and sorrow, which will point to law and order where
otherwise there is nothing apparent but painful
darkness and confusion, which will verify and
connect what is to all seeming manifold and dis
connected, even though that answer be hard and

repulsive in its very simplicity, surely it should
make every honest truth-seeking mind pause to see
ifindeed these things be so, if indeed darkness can
be so touched with light, and sorrow so turned into
joy. If the solution fits the problem it may indeed
be the result of chance, but it is a chance that
becomes ever more incredible as the conditions of
the problem are seen to be multiple and intricate :
and the more we know of life s complications on the

one hand and of the Church s simplification on the
other, the less possible is it for us to doubt that she
is from on high, the work of those hands which
INTRODUCTION.
fashioned the human soul, and which provide for
the needs of every creature they have fashioned.

We do not mean that our needs demand and
explain every point of Catholic teaching, as though
that religion were merely the complement of our
nature s exigencies, and were not also supernatural,
giving more than our heart as yet knows how to
desire. But the whole idea of personal trust and

faith is that those whom we
have found loving and
true to us in matters we can test, should ever be
accredited with the same love and truth in matters
beyond our criticism. So it is with faith in God,

with faith in Christ, with faith in the Catholic
hurch we understand enough to warrant full trust
;
in what we cannot understand, or cannot even

expect to understand.
It is, then, the belief that a deeper and more
comprehensive view of the Church s ethical and

spiritual ideals ;
of her conception as to the
capacities, the dignity and destiny of the human

soul, of the hope that she inspires in the midst of
so much that is otherwise disheartening, of the light
which she sheds over the dark abyss of sin and
temptation and sorrow it is the belief that such a
comprehensive view may in some cases serve far
more effectually than any direct apologetic to win,
to establish, or to confirm an abiding faith in her
divine origin and operation, that must partly excuse

INTRODUCTION.
or justify an otherwise reprehensible popularizing of

the secrets of the
"
King."
Not indeed that any one mind however broad

and deep can ever hope to grasp the Catholic idea
in its entirety, or can ever count itself to have com
prehended perfectly what by reason of its magni
tude must eludeall but an infinite thought. If every
advance in the knowledge of Nature advances us in
knowledge of our ignorance of Nature, the same

holds good of our study of the Christian revelation,
of the idea of Christ and the Church. Man s brain
grows-to and outgrows religions that are its own

creation, the provisional expression and images of
that Reality which touches him in conscience, and
cries out to him in Nature. But it does not, and
cannot, outgrow that revelation in which God has
expressed for him, albeit in faltering human
language, which are beyond all reason and
realities
experience. Our conception of one whom we meet

and observe daily will grow in depth, in volume, in
accuracy but our conception of one whom we
;
know only by hearsay cannot go beyond what is

contained in that hearsay. Yet this content may
be infinite in potentiality, like some mathematical
expression from which a process, of endless building-
up can be started. And so it is with that conception
of Himself and of His Christ and of His Church
which God has given us in the Christian revelation.
INTRODUCTION.
It is an idea which admits of infinite evolution,

which the Church keeps and broods over and
ponders in her heart ;

inwhich the best thought of
every age finds its highest ideals satisfied and
surpassed. Superficial critics who shrink from the
labour of a wide induction, are perpetually treating
this idea as it is found in some particular mind or
nationality or period, by consequence con

and
founding what is accidental with what is essential,
and failing to distinguish its morbid from its legiti
mate developments.
And indeed it is to the Church, who watches
over this process, that we must look for our
guidance as to results already obtained. But starting

where she leaves off and following in the direction
of the lines she has laid down, the minds of her

children will ever press on towards a fuller intelli
gence of the mysteries of faith, turning back at

times to gain her approval or to receive her rebuke
or to listen to her counsel; and thus, under her
supervision, they will purify the Catholic idea more
and more from all foreign admixture and build it
up member by member, nearing, yet never reaching,

a perfect disclosure of its organic unity, its simpli
city in complexity, its transcendent beauty.
Finally, in choosing Hard Sayings for a title,
allusion is made to the occasion when many of the
disciples of Jesus turned back and walked with Him

INTRODUCTION.
no more, because of His doctrine concerning the

great Mystery of Divine Love, in which all the other
mysteries of the Catholic faith are gathered up.
That this Man should give us His Flesh to eat, that
bread should be His Body, is indeed a "hard
many who
"
saying for the are the slaves of their
imagination, and who fancy that they know some

thing of the constitution of matter and the limits of
Divine omnipotence. But for the more thoughtful it
is a far harder saying that God should so care for
man s love as to come down from Heaven, and take
flesh that He might woo man in man s own
language the language of suffering. And if these
things are hard to the understanding, it is still
harder for the weak will to hear that God must be

loved back as He has loved us, with a love that
yields pain for pain, sacrifice for sacrifice, death for
death.
Here the Church has ever been faithful to her
Master. Others have, with false kindness, mitigated

the
"
hard sayings," and prophesied smooth things,

and drawn away the weak from her side. But
with all her human frailty, ever shrinking from the
stern ideal of the Cross, from the bitterness of the
Chalice of her Passion, when asked she has but one
ruthless answer, namely, that it is only through
many tribulations that we can enter the Kingdom
of God; that Christ s yoke is easy, not because
INTRODUCTION.
it is painless, but because love makes the pain

welcome.
To whom then shall we go but to her who has
the words of eternal life, who for two thousand
years has kept all these sayings and pondered them

in her heart ?
G. T.
Wimbledon.
SS. Peter and Paul, 1898.
CONTENTS,
INTRODUCTION ... .
PAGE
vu
*
The Soul and her Spouse .
J
The Hidden Life . 5
The Presence of God . -29

God in Conscience . . 45
Sin judged by Faith . 69
-93
Sin judged by Reason
...
.
.
Sin and Suffering .m

The Gospel of Pain . 131
"
J 52
"
Quid erit nobis ? .
The Life Everlasting . .

l(
>9
The Angelic Virtue

A
The Way
Great Mystery
of the Counsels
.... .
.
.220
*94
261
The Divine Precept . 295
The Mystery of Faith . -3*4

Idealism,
Discouragement
The Mystical Body
its Use and Abuse
....-... .
. 345
37^
397
The Gospel Pain

"
APPENDIX. Note to "
of . .
449
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.
Veni, Electa Mea, d ponam in Te, thronum meiim.
My Chosen
"
Come, One, and I will stablish

My throne in
thee."
THE end of man is, to save his soul Salus anima.

But what this health and well-being consists in is
specified when St. Ignatius 1
tells us that it is in
praising, reverencing, and serving God, in these
three manifestations of Divine
love, that salvation
is realized. Health lies in the right balance of
nutrition, in regularity of function, in the orderliness
of our bodily conditions and our
spiritual health,
;
in likemanner, means ordination; the due propor

tion and subjection of all our faculties to
God their
Creator and Lord the submission of our mind
;
to
the rule of Divine truth of our affections to the
;
rule of Divine love. Hence the whole aim of the

Spiritual Exercises is to secure ordination; to
induce that
all-mastering love of God in which the
soul is saved, perfected, and
brought to its highest
state and noblest
activity.
As the natural life of the soul depends on God s
dwelling in its substance, so the supernatural life or
Eternal Life of the soul is God, who dwells as
light
1
This discourse has reference to the words of the
opening
Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.
B
in the mind and as love in the heart, and who is
the object of that light and love.

Here and hereafter alike, the life and health of
the soul lies seeing God, though the mode of
in
seeing is different here, it is through a glass darkly,

;
in a riddle, there, here, in part,

face to face ;
there, wholly and perfectly; here, as a child, there,

as one who has put away the things of a child.
A little girl thinks herself absolutely happy when
she nurses her first doll. As a woman, with a living

babe at her breast, she looks back on that former
bliss and laughs. In Heaven she greets her child
once more ;
and once more she wonders that she
could ever have rejoiced before.
Eternal life is God in the soul. God is the soul s
soul. As the body corrupts when abandoned by
the soul, so too, the soul corrupts, morally and
intellectually, it becomes foetid, loathsome, disin
tegrated, deformed, apart from God. God is the
beauty, the health, the salvation of the soul. We
speak too exclusively of entering into Heaven, into
life, into God ; forgetting that the relation is truly
perhaps more truly expressed by saying that God,
and Heaven, and life, enter into us. We dwell in
God, just because God dwells in us. The branch
abides in the vine and the vine in the branch but ;
principally the vine in the branch. We feed upon

Christ, He does not feed upon us. The Kingdom
"
of God within you

is it is in your midst
;
there
"
fore we pray: Adveniat regnum tuum. speak We

of that Kingdom coming to us, not of our going
to it.
Vegna ver noi la pace del tuo regno

Che noi ad essa non potem da noi,
S ella non vien, con tutto nostro ingegno. 1
Heaven, in its substance and apart from mere

accessories, is simply the love of God perfected in the
soul the entire cleaving of the soul to God, whom
;
she -embraces with mind and heart Inveni quern

diligitanima mea ; tenui nee dimittam? And again :
Mihi Deo bonum est My sovereign good,

adhcerere
my heaven, consists in cleaving to God. And as

eternal life is the love of God elevated and carried
to its extreme perfection, so eternal death is the
disease of sin worked out to its last consequences.
Hell, in its substance and apart from all accessories,
is in the soul, as truly as the soul is in Hell perhaps
more truly.
This answer alone explains man, and proves its
own verity by its fitness. Were the soul a simple
problem, chance might stumble on many an apparent
solution but so complicated a riddle is past guess
;
work. A lock with a hundred intricate wards is the

only possible explanation of the key which alone
fits it, and which fits it alone. The soul, apart from
God, as meaningless, as useless as a stray key.
is
Its whole structure and movement cries out for

God. Who could understand the eye, with its lenses
and mirrors and inexplicable mechanism, who knew
nothing of light ? Everything in the eye has reference
1
Thy Kingdom come, that peace with us may reign ;
For if it come not of itself, in vain

Our wit would toil that Kingdom to attain. (Dante, Purg. xi.)
2
have found Him whom my soul loveth I have laid hold
"
I :
on Him, and I will not let Him go."

to light,and everything in the soul has reference to

God. Everything in the ear is unintelligible to one
born deaf, and everything in the soul is incoherent
and senseless for one who is dead to God. When
we see the vine straggling over the ground, its
tendrils are unexplained but when it climbs and;
clings to the prop we know what they were made

for. God is the soul s prop. The soul is simply
and wholly a capacity for God, and nothing else ;
just as the monstrance with all its golden rays and

gleaming jewels is simply and wholly a receptacle
for His Sacramental Presence a crystal shrine
through which the faithful may see and adore the
Bread of Angels. Our soul is such a monstrance ;
and its highest beauty and glory is from Him who

dwells in it, and shines through it. He is the light,
she is the lamp. On Protestant altars we some
time see (or used to see) candles which are never to
be lighted. "How unmeaning!" is our first thought.
The soul is God s candle, on which
descends like He
a flame and transforms her substance into His own
likeness. The candle was evidently made for the
flame which crowns it, beautifies it, quickens it.
God is not the soul, nor is the soul God but ;
as the candle is for the flame, so is the soul for

God.
When Adam God drew from his side
slumbered,
a help meet for him ;
made for
a being altogether
him, soul and body, inexplicable without him. God
drew the soul of man from His own side, and she is
restless till she returns thither again. The soul is
God s spouse made for ;
His embrace, made to
bring forth in herself His Word, His Image, His

Beloved Son. And the passion of the purest and
noblest heart of man is but the far-removed symbol
of the ardent love of God for His spouse. To Him
her whole being cries out Thou hast made me for
:
Thyself, as the casket for the jewel, as the mirror

for the sun, as the eye for light, as the ear for
sound, as the harp for music. My mind craves for

truth, and Thou art the Truth ;my will for good,
and Thou art the Good ; my heart for love, and
Thou art Love ; mine eye for beauty, and Thou art
the Beautiful; my ear for music, and Thou artSong;
my soul for eternity, life, and salvation, and Thou
art Eternity, Life, and Salvation.
We may say of the soul what is said of
Divine Wisdom Thesaurus est infinitus quo qui usi
:
suntfacti sunt amid Dei ; she is an unending treasure

which few are aware they possess; a secret and
unsuspected fount of perennial joy a well of living ;
water springing up unto life everlasting a

deep and ;
difficult well for those who have not wherewith to
draw. With most of us our soul is as a musical instru

ment in unskilled or half-skilled hands; but from
which trained fingers can draw forth melody and
sweetness. Weare too slothful to go through the
preliminary drudgery of practice. Impatient for
some little present gratification, we pick out little
tunes by ear, and never become masters in the
art of spiritual music. Or it is like a great
poem which to a child or a
rude-minded person
seems tiresome and overrated, because a certain
amount of education is needed before the mind can
answer to its appeal, and enter into its joy or it is ;
as one of the old masters whom the crowd hurries

in order to pause en
by in our picture-galleries
while the
raptured before some flaring vulgarity,
true artist lingers over every line and shadow with
a pleasure which is accentuated and not blunted by
that eat
use. Qui edunt me adhuc esurient "They
me shall hunger for more," is true of God and of
every good that is Divine.
to use
Plainly our chief care must be to learn
this treasure aright, to extract as much value out
each moment we possibly can, to bring the
as
highest faculties of our soul into perfect play. For

aright are made the friends
who use it of
"they
not as though friendship were an added

God,"
reward, but because friendship with God is itself

that very use for which the soul was created, and in
which its best faculties reach their highest develop
ment. We know how wonderfully mere human
friendship opens up the soul and betrays
to it depths
of which before it was all unconscious, how all that

is best in slumbers and sleeps till it is wakened
it
to energy by the touch of love, by the cry in the

Behold, the Bridegroom
"
midnight of its darkness:

cometh." And herein every other love but shadows
forth some aspect of that one all-satisfying, all-
transforming love which is the soul s eternal life,
which alone immortalizes her the love of the
Heavenly King and Bridegroom, to

is whom she
drawn by every need of her spiritual nature from ;
whose side she was taken that she might be a

is written
spouse meet for Him, as it
:
Virgins shall bedrawn to the King in her train,

Her neighbours shall be brought unto thee,
They shall be brought in joy and exultation,
1
They shall be led into the temple of the King.
These words are usually, and not unreasonably

applied by Holy Church to our Blessed Lady as to
the Queen of souls, through whom the souls of the
elect are brought to Christ in one living mass, as it
were, of swarming bees clustered round their queen.
She is the very centre and heart of that great soul-
world which God created and redeemed to be a
Kingdom Himself; to be subject to Him as the
for
bride is subject in love to the bridegroom. Virgins
shall be drawn in her train to the King virgins of ;
whom St. Paul writes, "
I am jealous of you with

the jealousy of God Himself, for I have espoused
you to one Husband, to present you as a chaste
virgin unto Christ." He speaks, indeed, of the
entire Church, the whole congregation of elect
souls ;
but what is true ofeach all is true of each ;
is a kingdom, each a chaste virgin to be presented

spotless and undefiled to Christ, her Spouse and her
King. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O thou
"
city of God, O thou soul of man, thou city of peace,

thou city of the great King." Mary is indeed the
Virgin of virgins, whose whole heart was His with
a wholeness unsurpassable but every soul, however ;
soiled and sin-stained, recovers its virginity when it
has been purified for God s embrace and taught

through many tribulations to love God not only
above all things, but alone. Therefore we are told
1
Psalm xliv. 15, 16.
that the King proves His elect bride as gold is

proved in fire seven times. And St. Paul, who like
the holy Baptist, is the paranymph, the friend of
the Bridegroom, who has His interests at heart and
prefers them to his own, is jealous with the jealousy
of God for those souls he is preparing for the King ;
jealous lest the purity of their affection should be

tarnished by the least spot of any love not for God,
or from God, or in God. And God Himself is
jealous and says the Lord thy God, am a

"
:
I,
jealous God ; thou shalt have none other gods but

me;" thou shalt give Me all thy love, for I will have
nothing less. He is jealous for that He knows that
He alone is our Peace, our Life, our all-satisfying
eternal Good.
And now how souls are brought to God:
see
"Virgins drawn shall be
to the King in her wake;"
drawn and not driven, drawn through their affections
with the silken cords of love, willing captives to that
most blessed tyranny. Drawn by the spell of the
King s beauty, whom at first they behold, not face to
face, but mirrored in His created reflex, yet nowhere
so fully, so faultlessly as in the Queen of souls who
stands at His right hand in her vesture of pure
gold, fringed round with many-coloured broiderings.
For if He is Speciosus pvcz filiis hominum "
fair
before all the sons of men," she too is all-fair, and
poured forth upon her lips." And as we
"grace is
turn from a sudden light to see the source whence it

proceeds, so our eye travelling instinctively from
the glory which flashes upon Mary s gold mantle,
climbs to Heaven. It is as when we see one whose
eyes are fixed in rapture on something we cannot

see, and whose face is lit with a joy we cannot
understand yet we fain would know that secret,
;
and are drawn to wonder, and seek, and knock till

it be opened to us.
Thus it is that God draws souls to Himself, one

through another. Thus it is that we are each to
draw souls to Him in the wake of our own, Donee
occurramus omnes in unitatem fidei et agnitionis filii
Dei until we are all run together in oneness of faith
and knowledge of the Son of God, until we are all
made into one vast body centred round Mary and
wedded to Christ, our Head and Spouse.
Proximo ejits afferentur tibi Her nearest shall "
be brought unto Thee." It is those nearest to Mary

who are most quickly, most potently drawn those ;
in whose souls there is the least alloy, whose mind

and affection has been purged in the fire from all
dross and impurity. As the soul nears Mary, it
also nears its own birth-place in the heart of its
Creator, and is drawn with an ever-quickening speed
to its final repose. It is drawn in Icztitia et exulta
tions "in
joy and which grows every
exultation,"
moment of its nearing.

"
In
joy,"
for though the
"
strifebe sore, yet in His parting breath, Love

masters agony." Like all coming to birth, this
throwing off the bands of our narrower self, is

not without pain and anguish and cracking of
the heart-strings. If the soul is to come to the
King, she must forget her own people and her
father s house yet, labor ipse amatur, the pain
;
itself is loved as the expression and the relief of

leaping, and walking, and

In
" "
love. exultation,"
praising God," as the once-lame, glorying in his

new-found, God-given strength, or as Mary herself
who when carried to the Temple of the King, and
being set down on the sacred steps from her mother s
arms,
"
danced with her feet," as the old legend says.

I was glad when they said to me, Let us go into
"
the house of the Lord our feet shall stand within ;
thy courts, O
City of Peace." And the thronging
souls who are drawn after her to be presented to
the King, they too have tasted the sweet bitterness
of sacrifice and offering, and in joy and exultation
have cried :
"
Lord, in the singleness of my heart,

gladsome I offer Thee this day all, without reserve "
D Offline in simplicitate cordis mei Icztus obtuli universa

hodie.
But what manner of King is this that the
home to which His spouse is brought should be
called a temple rather than a palace that He ;
should be loved with a love of adoration and

worship ; with sacrifice and offering and absolute
self-surrender ?
Ipse enim est Dominus Dens tuus,
says our Psalm, et adorabunt eiim "
For He is the
Lord thy God whom all shall adore."
"Thy
Maker
is thy His love and His
husband," says Isaias.
absolute right of kingship is founded on His creator-
ship, on the entire dependence of the soul upon His
abiding thought and care, a dependence whereof
that of the child upon the mother in whose womb
it lives, is but a feeble hint, even as that mother s
love is but a faint reflex of the love of the Creator

for the soul ever new-born in His bosom,
THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE. n
And He rules as King in the soul when all
her affections are so given to Him that she

loves Him, not only above all things, in such sort
for Him, but alone,
that she would leave all else
loving nothing else but in relation to Him, in
the way that He loves it, and desires that she
should love it and for this consummation He
;
moves her to long, and pray, and labour, and suffer,

and cries out within her: Adveniat regnum tuuni.
Oh, when will there be an end to these miseries
"
when be delivered from the wretched bondage

shall I
of these vices when shall I be mindful of Thee,

;
O Lord, alone when shall I rejoice in Thee to the

;
full when shall I be without all let of true liberty,

;
without burdening from mind or from body when ;
shall I contemplate the Thy Kingdom; glory of

when Thou be to me all in all when shall I be
wilt ;
with Thee in Thy Kingdom, which from eternity

Thou hast been getting ready for Thy dear ones ? 1
"
Of Mary, world s sad aspiration s one

"the
success," God has had His

the one soul in which
own way unimpeded, which He has fully assertedin
His presence and shone forth as through a faultless
crystal, of Mary it is said, The Queen hath stood "
at Thy right hand in vesture of gold with many-

coloured broiderings. Hearken, My daughter, behold,
and incline thine ear. Forget thy own people and
the house of thy father and the King shall long ;
after thy beauty; for He is the Lord thy God,

whom all shall adore." For the soul is indeed a
queen, when she is all glorious within, and when
]
Imitation, iii. 48.
12 THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.
Christ rules over her with absolute unimpeded

dominion. any other rule but His, she
Subject to
is so far a slave, nor has she yet perfect
liberty,
perfect self-mastery. But subject to Christ, she is
by the very fact raised to a throne at His side and
shares His rule over her every faculty and move
ment thus dying to live, and losing to gain, and
;
forsaking all to find a hundred-fold now, and ever
lasting liberty in the life to come. For what is

liberty but the perfect development and exercise of
allour powers in due order. Thus, King and Queen,
they reign side by side ; God and His little creature.
And she is His consort, con-sors, one who shares the
same lot or portion. She is ever with Him at His
right hand whether by His Cross on Calvary or by
;
His throne in Heaven. If we suffer with Him,"

"
says St. Paul, "we shall also reign with Him." If

His kingship over her was purchased with sorrow,
her queenship is bought no
cheaper there is no
;
way His side but through thorns and brambles.

to
How is the queen clad ? Like Mary, in her
broidered vesture of gold in her mantle of world
;
wide universal charity, big enough to shelter a

thousand worlds-full of sinners who fly thither for
refuge as chickens to their mother s wings; that
mantle which enfolds the redeemed world as a
sunlit sky thinly curtaining off the
place Christ is
preparing for us in secret, woven of gold purified
seven times by her seven sorrows, for what love
is so pure as the love we bear those for whom,
and even from whom, we have suffered ? And the
many-coloured fringes with which this mantle is
decked around, what are they but the virtues midst

which charity rules as mother and mistress, which
spring from her bosom, and draw their life from
her for love is the fulfilling of the law, the sum and
;
substance of all its precepts.

Finally, the vocation of Mary is in some
measure the vocation of every soul
"
Hearken, :
My daughter, and forget thy own people and thy

father s house," forget thyself and every other
affection so far as it is debased by any undue
infusion of self; lose thy life that thou mayest save
it, give and it shall be given to thee, full measure,
pressed down, shaken together, and running over ;
leave all, and thou shall find all quit thy desires,
"
and thou shalt find rest." We Catholics need not

to be told that the call to closer union with
God, to
love Him from deadening or quenching
alone, far
any right and healthy nature affection, or warping
or maiming the soul perfects, purifies, deepens, and
;
exalts all that it regulates and restrains. None love

father or mother or brother or friend so tenderly,
truly, eternally, as they who love God more than all,
and all for God s sake, as Jesus loved Mary or John
or Lazarus, or the Magdalen, for Divine love is the

myrrh which embalms all other love and saves it
from taint and corruption. Ungoverned by that
over-ruling affection, our other affections are a dis
orderly riotous mob, weak individually and col
lectively, and dangerous by reason of their very
weakness and waywardness but under that sway
;
they are disciplined, strengthened, and welded

together into the unity of an army with one mover,
i4 THE SOUL AND HER SPOUSE.
one and licence and confusion give

action, one end,
place to order and true liberty. This is that life
bought at the cost of death and mortification, in
which the self, forgotten in the remembrance and
thought of God, is found again in Him, recognized

almost as part of Him, and loved rightly for His
sake and in sympathy with Him. Precious in the
eyes of God is this death of the soul in which she
is buried in Him and from which she rises to a new
life the death which Mary embraced when she

elected to be the sorrowful Mother of the Man of
Sorrows, and said, Ecce ancilla Domini.
Into the soul thus purified God looks as into a
burnished mirror and sees there the reflex of His
own beauty, without spot or wrinkle," and longs
"
for that soul and draws it to Himself with the
impetuous ardour of the love He of necessity bears

towards the very least shadow of His own Divine
.goodness even as the earth draws back to her
;
bosom whatever would vainly fly from her thrall.

The King shall then long for thy beauty, for He
"
is the Lord thy God it is from His bosom thou

"
wert taken it is from Him thou wouldst vainly

;
flee it is to Him thou must return of

; necessity, in
the measure that the mirror of thy soul is purged of
selfishness and His nature and image shines out in
Glorious things are spoken of thee," O thou
"
thee.
soul of man, thou city of the great King.
THE HIDDEN LIFE.
u II faut se bien
persuader qu il n y-a absolument d utile,
de reel, d interessant que ce qui se passe entre notre ame et
Lui qui tout est Mrs. Craven, Meditations.
la."
As children our thoughts about God are childish of

necessity, and are no more suited to our later years
than the clothes and toys of our infancy. As men
we must put away the thoughts of childhood unless
our soul is to perish through nakedness and starvation.
We must recognize that God is not one who made
the world once for all and then retired from His
labours to rest in the distant heavens and to survey
His work from afar, but that whatever excellence is
found in any creature is due to the image of God
reflected there and that as the image in a mirror is
;
caused by the presence of him who stands in front

of it, and stays while he stays and goes when he
goes, so it is because God is most intimately present
to all things, is permeating and penetrating their
inmost substance, that they are what they are. For
they depend for every instant of their being and
every vibration of their activity on the continual,
sustained exercise of God s conscious love. He
radiates them into being as the flame radiates its
light and heat. As the thoughts and images which
we conjure up in our mind depend upon our will, so
16 THE HIDDEN LIFE.
creation (whose reality compared with God s is but

as a dream) hangs on the Divine will. Creatures are
nothing more nor less than mirrors or crystals
designed to show forth, to reflect and analyze the
multiform beauty of the Divine Light, to split it up
into its infinitely various components. Their beauty,
their brightness, their colouring, is not their own, not
from themselves, but from the Light that permeates

them, from God who dwells in them. Yet while each
is in some measure a temple of His
presence, accord
ing to the degree in which it mirrors His goodness,
it is in the soul of man, with its
spiritual powers
and activities, that His image is most perfectly and
nobly displayed. Here, however, His indwelling is
two-fold. In the indestructible nature of the soul
and in those activities and perfections which are
common to good and evil alike, nay, which are
possessed in the most excellent degree even by the

fallen spirits, in these He dwells in the measure that
He wills, nor does His indwelling depend upon the
consent of the creature. But if He would reflect
and show forth those attributes which are essentially
perfections, not of the mind alone, but also of the
power of choice or of free-will, if He would dwell
in us as sanctity, as truthfulness, as justice, as
purity, as patience, as meekness, as love, still more,

if He would crown these natural virtues and raise
them to a Divine order by grace, and by His
indwelling Spirit, if He would work Faith, Hope,
and Charity in our hearts, then indeed He must
wait upon our will He must stand at the door and
;
knock until we open and receive Him.

-V THE HIDDEN LIFE. I?
It is of this
indwelling that St. Paul writes I :
"
live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." For all

Christian sanctity is simply the presence of
Christ,
of God Incarnate dwelling in the
soul, uttering
Himself, asserting Himself there nor can we boast ;
of anything, save that we have not shut the door in

His face. All the glory of the temple is from Him
who dwells in it. Whatever sanctity or spiritual
beauty is found in the members of Christ s Mystical
Body, flows into them from the Head. It is the
life of Christ, extended and manifested in His
Church on earth, which continues the sacrifice of
praiseand holiness inaugurated by Him in His own
person upon earth. The Church is the tree which
has grown out of that seed. Hence St. Paul writes:
"
To Him (i.e., to the Father) be

glory in the Church
and in Christ for ever and ever ;
"
for Christ and the

Church are one thing.
We
are sanctified, therefore, in
proportion as
Christ lives and dwells in us. But our
spiritual life
is a life of
thoughts, words, and actions; it has
its outward and its inward side. And if we ask
ourselves which is the more
important, the more
fundamental, there can be but one answer. For
as the soul is to the so is the interior
body,
to the exterior man; and so is the inner life
of our thoughts and affections to the outer
life of our words and actions. Soul and body
alike are essential of
parts humanity; yet the
body is for the
the soul for the
soul, not
body. Christ must dwell in our outward and in
our inward life, but in the latter; for
principally
c
18 THE HIDDEN LIFE.
the outward is for the sake of the inward, and not

conversely.
It is what we think about and what we love that
matters most, and that makes us what we really are in

God s eyes, as opposed to what we seem in the eyes
of others. It is the secret life of our heart which
is our highest, noblest life. It is in the theatre of
our inmost soul that the great drama of our life is
played. Men see but the shadows that flit across
the curtain now and then, and overhear an odd
word at times. God and our conscience are the
sole spectators.
Our life for all eternity will
be a life, not of
speaking and doing, but of contemplating and
loving an interior life. This is life eternal, that
"
they should know Thee." Heaven is but the

triumphant advent, the unimpeded reign of God in
the soul. And so far as we here begin to enter into
eternal life we must live principally at home in our
own hearts, and regard that as the chief scene
of our existence, Regnum Dei intra vos est. In
brief, eternal life is friendship with God with a
friend whom we find in our heart, whom we listen
to in our conscience.
This is not the truism it sounds. For though
we all admit as axiomatic that our inner life is of
the highest importance, and that without it the

outer only pretence and hypocrisy, yet in this
life is
pseudo-practical age we are likely to invert the

right order of things, and to regard the importance
of the heart s life as subordinate and relative to the
life of our outward conduct ;
to consider it as a
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 19
means to that end, and not as a co-ordinate and far

nobler end in We
recognize that good actions
itself.
and fair words, if they are not merely hypocritical,

are the children of good thoughts and desires, and
that if we want to enjoy the fruit, we must cultivate
the seed. Yet it is this very analogy of seed and
fruit which is so fallacious, which leads us to regard

the inner life as valuable simply for the sake of its
outward effects, and to forget that the hidden acti
vities of the soul are absolutely the highest. Truly
the greater includes the less, and if the heart is
right, it will not fail to overflow and betray itself in
our speech and conduct for from the fulness of
;
"
the heart the mouth speaketh." But it is the

fulness of the heart that God
looks to and values,
and not the utterances of the mouth. The Catholic
religion has always been very plain on this point,
setting the contemplative life above the active in
dignity, as more conformable to that of the angels,
who for ever behold the face of God. And as it is
necessary for the Church s corporate perfection that
there should be always some members set apart for
such a life, as many, namely, as is compatible with
the Church s active ministrations, so it is needful in
the life of the individual that there should be times

set apart for the cultivation of those inner activities
in which our highest and best life consists.
Here the childhood of the race presents a
parallel to that of the individual. The Law was
before the Gospel. It was written on tables of stone ;
itenjoined observances in word and deed. Excellent

and Divine, so far as it went, yet it brought nothing
20 THE HIDDEN LIFE.
to perfection till Christ came, not to destroy but

fulfil, not to make light of outward sanctity, but to
carry sanctification into the heart as well. For in
order of genesis the imperfect is before the- perfect,
the animal before the spiritual, the earthly before
the heavenly, although in the order of Divine
intention that which is last to be realized is what is.
first and chiefest to be desired, and is the parent of
all other desires. The Law forbade murder, but
Christ forbade the angry and revengeful thought ;
the Law restrained deeds of selfish arrogance and

violence, Christ taught men to be meek and humble
in their hearts, to think gently, humbly, forgivingly
of the weakness and sins of others. The Law said,
"Thou shalt not commit adultery," Christdemanded
purity of heart, cleanness of the imagination, and
chastity of desire. It is out of the heart of man,
according to Christ, that all lawlessness and wicked

ness proceed, and the external disorder caused by
such violence and licence, is but an insignificant
evil compared with the ruin of God s sanctuary
within the heart itself, the profanation of His image
in the soul of man, the darkening of the intellect, the
enslaving of the will, the chaos of the affections and

passions.
vSo it is with each of us individually. When we
first turn to the service of God we are legalists,
imbued with the spirit of the Law, and if not
actually superstitious in our estimate of the import
ance of observances, yet incredulous of the extreme
necessity and all-importance of the secret life and
converse of the heart. We are careful, indeed, to
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 21
check evil desires, because we soon learn that, as

the smouldering spark gives birth to the flame, so
desire kindles up into action. But it is long before
we realize the simple fact that as our evil propen
sitiespride, anger, vanity, avarice, lust, and the
rest are strengthened every time we yield to them
in outward act, so they can be fostered
steadily,
persistently, unnoticeably, by the mere unheeded
dreamings of our imagination and wanderings of
our fancy apart from all desire or purpose of
putting these fancies into effect. Nay, it is chiefly
from this perennial source that our vices are fed
and nurtured as by an insensible dew, so fine and
subtle as to be imperceptible. And thus it comes
to pass that our heart
overgrown with noxious
is
weeds and tangling briars which we cannot account

for, so silent and slow has been the growth, and yet
so steady and constant.
What is true of our evil propensities is equally
true of those that are pure and It is by the
holy.
continual stream of our thoughts and
imaginings
that they are insensibly nourished and
strengthened,
rather than by our outward actions, which are
comparatively occasional and intermittent. We

live by more
the air we breathe, sleeping and
waking, than by the food we take only from time to
time.
Therefore St. Paul says: 1 Whatsoever things "
are true, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever
"
Qusecunque sunt vera quaecunque pudica, quaecunque justa,

quaecunque sancta, quascunque amabilia, quaecunque bonae famoe.
si qua virtus, si qua laus disciplinae, haec cogitate." (Philipp. iv. 8.)
22 THE HIDDEN LIFE.
things are just, whatsoever things are holy, what

soever things are lovable, whatsoever things are of
good report, if there be any virtue, if any praise
worthy, discipline, hac cogitate; think about these
"
things ;
feed your heart on such food meditate ;
on the things of God, on anything that is good and

beautiful or true in the works of God s hands, or in
the laws of His world,or in the thoughts and
doings and lives of men on whatsoever is noblest
;
and best in human conduct. And though God

Himself, the source of all such goodness, should be
the chief food of our reflection, yet St. Paul knows
well that here we do not see God face to face, but
only in His works. Nor is it possible for our minds
always to be occupied directly and consciously about
the things of God, but it suffices that its theme be
something worthy and profitable, or in some way

referable to the service and glory of God, such as
our business or daily concerns, our lawful and
reasonable recreations, our converse with our
fellow-men. Still better it is for us to accustom our
mind to the higher thoughts that secular literature
and art furnish us with in such abundance; to
cultivate a certain orderliness, purity, and elevation
in our imaginings; not to disdain the grace that
God offers us in
a good education, and in the
opportunities of refining our taste. All this helps
to bring order into the tangled wilderness of our
fancies, to strengthen the faculties of the soul, and
to give us a more perfect control over their workings;
so that when occasions offer we may use them more
effectually and faithfully in the direct service of God.
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 23
Speaking of the perfection of our outward

conduct, St. James says, that he who offends not
in tongue the same is a perfect man, for he is able
to govern himself as with a bridle. For although in
some sense the tongue has no movement of itself,
but only that which it receives from our thought
and will, yet it is so closely yoked with the imagina
tion, so ready for instant use at all times, that it
seems almost to share the automatic and semi-

independent nature of that faculty, and to drag us
along in its course, committing us to much that in
no sense represents our matured and deliberate
sentiments. In proportion as its movements are
minute, rapid, multitudinous, they more easily
evade our attention and self-control. Hence, since
self-government is the precise point in which man
differs from animals, he who can govern every
movement of his tongue is indeed a perfect man
and master of himself. Manifestly, he is perfect in
his outward conduct but more than this, he is also
;
to some extent perfect in the control of his thoughts

and affections for without this, by reason of the
;
close connection of word and thought, faultlessness

in speech is not possible in any positive sense.
For to master one s tongue is not to keep perpetual
silence, but to say the right thing in the right
place.
Yet there are hours when even the most restless
energy must be still, and the busiest tongue must
be silent, when there is no room for any other
activity but that of the soul and then he is indeed
;
a perfect man who offends not; w hose thoughts and

r
THE HIDDEN LIFE.
approved feelings are faultless before God in whose ;
inner life Christ s image and indwelling is manifest ;
whose soul is united to the Divine Soul of our

Saviour in all its
imaginings, reasonings, aspirations,
sentiments, through the indwelling of that same
Spirit which sanctified His Soul and the soul of His
Mother and of all His saints.
This is, indeed, the highest point of perfection ;
the most difficult, and therefore the last to be

attained in its fulness. The Law was our pedagogue
which led us to Christ ;
the exterior life is the
scaffolding preparatory to the never-finished task of
building up the inner sanctuary of God s presence.
tongue seems to run away with us, far
If our
truer is which may be compared
this of our thought,
to an endless stream, springing from the hidden
depths of our memory, which rolls past us, bearing
on its bosom all manner of odds and ends, the litter
and debris of our past experiences and reflections ;
nor is it in our power to do much more than to

stand on the bank and watch, and with our attention
fix and arrest what is profitable for our spiritual
food, suffering all else to float by, or even hastening

it on its True, it depends largely (not
way.
altogether) upon our previous choice what this
stream of subjective time shall find in the storehouse
of our memory to carry past us in its current. We
are not immediately answerable for all the fancies
that flit across our brain, except so far as by
deliberate approval we make them virtually our own
act. But the general character and tone of our
involuntary memories and fancies is to a great
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 25
extent chargeable to our past conduct, exterior and

interior. Moreover, those who watch over their
hearts, gradually acquire a knowledge of the laws
which bind together our fancies into chains and
groups they know what leads to what and there
; ;
fore they can in some measure determine the
particular channel in which the stream shall flow ;
and so they can advance indefinitely nearer to that

perfect inner self-mastery which is never absolutely
attainable by mortal man in this life.
Perhaps this interior life was never more difficult,

never more apt to be underrated, neglected, forgotten
than in these days, when knowledge is multiplied to
the hurt of wisdom, and the means of mental
subsistence is exalted into an end. There is so
much to be known now-a-days if we would pass
muster as people of even ordinary education, so
much of the experiences and thoughts of other men
to be stored away in our memories, that life in most
cases is not long enough for the process and no
margin of leisure remains for digesting and assimi
lating the food with which we have been surfeited.
We deal it out to others as we ourselves received it,
crude and unchanged as it were, so much coin that

;
passes from hand to hand and bears no other stamp

than that of the nation.
And with the multiplication of knowledge and
information the evil increases daily, and thought
and reflection becomes the province of a dwindling
number of specialists, to whom the minds of the
millions are enslaved, for it is the tyranny of
capitalism in another sphere. We no longer have

26 THE HIDDEN LIFE.
time to think for ourselves, but our thinking is done

for us wholesale, and distributed to us through the
press, and the very faculty of meditation has grown
paralyzed from disuse.
This fault of modern education cannot but make
itself felt in the spiritual life of the faithful at large
in a decay of the ability and habit of reflection.
Not to speak of a narrow and exaggerated idea of
practical piety which would (if it dared, in the face
of Catholic tradition) make the service of God
chiefly consist in everlasting fussiness and external
Church-work," and parish-work, and
"
activity, in
controversy, in the corporal works of mercy, which
is secretly impatient of contemplative orders, con
templative saints, and contemplation in general,
which is puzzled how to defend the eremitical life or
life of mere
the suffering and solitude that certain
saints have chosen not to speak of all this, it is to
;
be feared that in regard even to our spiritual needs,

information and knowledge are apt to be mistaken
for that vital thought, that meditative wisdom which
is the true life of the soul, the quickening flame, of
which knowledge and information and experience is
but the fuel. We store our mind with the recorded
experiences and reflections of others, but we do not
compare these things and ponder them in our heart;
.we do not assimilate and digest. We gather manna
ourselves and we distribute it to others but we ;
forget that it is given to us for food to be eaten, ;
not to be gazed on and all because the leisure,

the practice, the habit, and therefore the ability of
tranquil reflection tends to become the privilege
THE HIDDEN LIFE. 27
of the few, and because there is so much to be

devoured that there is no time to ruminate.
However difficult the interior life may be, yet it
Except you eat the Flesh of the

"
is all-important.
Son of Man and drink His Blood ye have no life in

you."
If the first sense of these words refers to
sacramental communion, it cannot be doubted but
they are also verified of the spiritual communion in
which Christ dwells in our hearts through faith.
Spiritual communion is not merely a substitute for
that which is sacramental, but it is the usual con
dition for the fruitfulness of the sacrament nay, in ;
some sort, it is the end to which the sacramental

eating of Christ is directed, the grace it is designed
to produce. In the Eucharist we receive the seed
of that supernatural life which ordinarily manifests
itself in our heart and in our conduct, but without
meditation the seed lies idle and uncultivated the
force may be there, but it is latent. Christ, and
Christ Crucified, is the food of our soul, the daily
bread of our eternal life, the fuel of Divine love in
our heart. He is the Word Incarnate, the Divine
"
Saying," which we must keep and ponder in our

heart ;
in whom whatsoever things are true, pure,
lovely, of good report, and
praiseworthy, are
summed up and gathered together as in their source
and end.
In all this matter Mary must be our model of
the interior life ; Mary, in whom Christ dwelt as
He dwelt in no other, in whose heart alone He had
His own way from the very first in whose life He ;
asserted Himself unimpeded. Her words and

28 THE HIDDEN LIFE.
actions, however full of sublime significance, were

few. But the whole record of her life of stupendous
fruitfulness and epitomized for us in one
activity is
brief sentence Mary kept all these sayings and

:
pondered them in her heart. Blessed is the womb

"
that bore Thee," cries a voice in the crowd, "and

blessed the paps which Thou hast sucked." "Yea,
says our Lord, blessed are they that hear

"
rather,"
the Word of God and keep Blessed was Mary it."
above all women in that she was Mother of God ;
yet more blessed in that she was full of grace and

had found favour with God blessed, in that Christ;
dwelt in her womb, yet rather blessed, in that Christ

"dwelt in her heart by faith."
THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
Quo ibo a spiritu tuo et quo a facie tuafugiam.
Whither shall
"
I from Thy
fly Spirit, whither escape from
Thy presence ?
"
Psalm cxxxviii.
WE are always told before entering on prayer to

ourselves in the presence of God; and at all
"
"put
times to endeavour "
to live in the presence of God."

Indeed, be said that sanctification lies in a
it may
practical realizing of the presence of God. For
Heaven is the state in which we see God face to
face and stand
His presence continually
in and ;
sanctity is but Heaven begun upon earth. In pro

portion, therefore, as we live in God s presence, do
we enter into the lot of the saints in light. Plainly,
if God is
omnipresent, if all things are naked and
open to His sight, whether we like it or not we are
always equally in His presence that is, we are ;
equally present to Him. But local or physical

presence one thing, and conscious presence is
is
another. Two
trees are physically present one to
another in the same garden, and this relation is
necessarily mutual. jBut while a tree is present to
the touch or sight or consciousness of an observer,
the observer is not present to the consciousness of
the tree, for it has none. So too, one person may
be present to the consciousness of another who is
30 THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
thinking of him, or looking at him, or listening to

him, and yet that other may not be present to him.
To live in God s presence, or to put ourselves in
His presence, means to become actually conscious
of God as present or at least so to live as though
;
we were thus actually conscious. For at times the

presence of others will act as a check upon us even
when we are not positively thinking about them at
all because we have a sort of latent sense, or sub-
;
consciousness of being watched and observed. I

suppose it may be explained by saying that there is
a certain line of conduct and converse, a certain
pitch or tone, which we take according as we are
alone or in company, and, again, according to the
nature of our company and that when once the
;
consciousness of our surroundings has started us on

one of these lines, we persevere in it after we have
ceased to attend to the reason, unless something
diverts us altogether.
As children we must of necessity think of God
under the somewhat magnified figure of our earthly
parents and rulers. He lives, we know not how,
above the clouds, beyond the stars wherever that
may be He surveys the earth and its dwellers from
;
afar, with an eagle-vision of surpassing keenness ;
He rules it by some mysterious actio in distans,
except when He sends angels to execute His will,

as it were, in His absence. Religious art and
symbolism, nay, the enacted symbolism by which
Christ ascended, and was lifted up with the clouds,
or by which the clouds were parted for the descent
of the Dove, all tends to press this picture of
THE PRESENCE OF GOD.
the absent God still deeper into our imagination, so

that even when reason rises to the truth of God s
omnipresence, fancy ever gives it the lie and hinders
the practical realization of the fact. lift up our We
eyes and hands in prayer as to a God outside us
and above us and herein we follow the practice,
;
not merely of the rude and simple, but of all the

saints and of Christ Himself. The appearances
under which God has revealed Himself; the terms
and figures in which the inspired writings speak
of Him, all alike tend to set our imagination at
variance with our reason, nay, with our faith, which
tellsus distinctly that God is a Spirit to be wor
shipped neither on Sion nor on Garizim, but in
spirit and in truth ; that He dwells not in temples
made with hands ; that the Heaven of heavens
cannot contain Him ; that if we go up into Heaven,
He is there ; if we descend there ;into Hell, He is
that His eyes are everywhere beholding the evil and

the good.
Herein our quarrel is with the necessary limita
tions of our finite nature, which require that
spiritual truths should be presented to our childish
mind, not in their naked purity, but in the swaddling-
bands of sensuous imagery, God permitting or not
hindering the admixture of error, for the sake of the
golden grains of truth which cannot be otherwise
conveyed. But it is for us as we grow, to put away
the thoughts of childhood, as we put away its
clothes or its toys to adopt those more suitable to
our years. Unfortunately, while we educate and
develop our mind in every other direction, we are
content to remain babes all our lives in the things

of God and our soul "the
things that belong to
our peace." But as the clothes of our infancy are
too strait for comfort and decency in our maturity,
so our first conceptions of God and spiritual things
are too crude and grotesque to be taken seriously
by our formed intelligence, or to exercise any
influence over our heart and will. Custom and
reverence may prevent our casting them aside
altogether but they have ceased to be a reality to
;
us. We are as those who having done a little Latin

and Greek in their boyhood before going into
business, wonder secretly what pleasure, still more
what use, some can profess to find in classical
literature and regard such enthusiasm as a craze
;
or affectation.Perhaps they remember a line or

two from Horace, or an aphorism from the Delectus
which they quote on occasion, to show a certain
respect for conventional ideas of education. So
we find many whose religion consists of a few
platitudes remembered from childhood, seeds still
lying by the wayside, which have never struck
root so as to become a living growth developing
pari passu with the growth of the soul. Human
respect may seal their lips, but in their hearts they
wonder what others can find in religion, and why
they speak of it as a necessity of life. Such minds

are an easy prey to the shallow sophist who has no
difficulty in persuading them of the untenableness
of their religious notions nor it is with much of a
;
wrench that they part from the faith which they

have never understood and never loved.
THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 33
"
Why does God hide Himself? Why can I not

see Him or hear Him ?
Why does He let things
run their course, and do so little to show His power
over Nature ? These are some of the first diffi
"
culties whichour minds as we emerge from

rise in
childhood, suggesting to us that there are some

common features to be found in theology and in
fairy tales, and inclining us to put them into one
category. Figuring God as corporeal and human,
we unconsciously suppose that He makes Himself
invisible by some miraculous power that He for ;
bears to make Himself heard for some capricious

reason that whereas we make our power over
;
Nature felt every moment, He chooses to be inert,

lest His presence should be detected. Perhaps our
ill-informed teachers tell us that God affects this
secrecy in order to try our faith and if we ask ;

why
God should try us by faith, we are told that we may
not ask, but must take things as we find them a
sort ofanswer which can silence but cannot satisfy.
Plainly, what we have failed to recognize is, that
God does not by some magic make Himself invisible,
but that He is naturally invisible to bodily eyes,
and that if He makes Himself seen or
heard, it is
by a miracle that in such cases the form we see
;
is not God, nor are the words we hear His

words,
as though He had voice and lips and tongue as we
have. Nor does God enter into conflict with Nature
and overcome it as we do, or turn aside the
orderly course of events as by some foreign external
agency ; for it is He who moves Nature, and
in all
the orderly course of events is but the expressior/of
D
His mind and will. It is in the language of His

creatures, in the workings of His providence, in the
voice of our conscience, that God is heard and seen.
He is not secret or hidden, if we search for Him
with the right faculty, namely, our intelligence.
Sound is not the object of sight, nor colour of
hearing ;
nor is God the object of my sense, but
only of reason
intelligence. and are not We
aggrieved because we cannot see electricity, since
it is naturally not visible. God is as naturally
invisible ;
nor is it caprice but necessity which
makes faith in the wide sense of holding to in
visible realities a condition for salvation. Indeed,
that which marks the progress of man from savagery
to perfect humanity, is the practical apprehension
and realization of invisible realities, shown in a
tendency to look beneath appearances to the under
lying substance of things, to pass from effects to
their hidden causes, to live more in the past and
the future by memory and foresight, and not as
mere animals on the apex of the present instant in :
a word, to be governed by reasons, ideas, principles,

rather than by sensations, impressions, impulses.
So that, even in the natural order, there is no
salvation without faith, which in this wide sense is
the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen.
Let us now determine a little more closely and
clearly what it is to live in the presence of God.

We are told that the angels and blessed always
behold the face of our Father who is in Heaven that ;
they see the very substance of God with the eye of

their intelligence conceiving Him not merely as the

;
cause of some special effect which manifests His

presence but conceiving Him directly in Himself.
;
If I hear a great crash, I form a distinct conception

of it, by which I should recognize a similar crash as
belonging to the same class, and should say There s "
another I also know at once that it has a cause ;

"
but what the cause is, an explosion, or a train, or

an earthquake, I have no idea or rather, I know ;
the cause simply as the cause of this noise, and

nothing more and I want to know something more
;
about it as well. I want to know it as directly as

I know the noise which it has caused. So in this
lifewe know a great deal about God as the cause
of creation, but we want to know Him as directly as
we know creation to know not merely what He is
;
in relation to His creatures, but also what He is in

Himself. For God not merely a creator; just
is
as a poet is not merely a poet, but a man with a

personality of his ow n, of which his poesy
r
is but a
fragmentary manifestation.
God is no more the proper object of
But
any created intelligence, than the blinding bright
ness of the sun intensified a thousand-fold is
of the vision of some dark-loving animal, an
owl or a bat. Raised by grace to powers above
all their and angels
natural exigencies, the saints
face brightness boldly, without the medium
that
of any darkened glass they see God and yet ;
live. And that vision fascinates their* gaze and

holds them spell-bound, so that they can never for
an instant cease to behold the face of the Father.
And whatever they do or think is the result of

else
that vision is consciously caused by it, and no
;
more interrupts it than an object seen in the light

interrupts my consciousness of the light. It is in
God as in a mirror, it is in the mind of God and in

the heart of God, that our angels always behold us.
They do not turn away from God to look at us but ;
rather they see us with the Divine eyes in con

sequence of their union with God. It is through
God, moreover, that they act upon us and minister
to us ;
their will being altogether merged in His ;
even as love makes us one thing, having one thought,

one operation with those we love.
The blessed are thus continually conscious of
God s face and that, with a full and direct con
;
sciousness not as we are conscious of the light or

;
of the air, in an indirect manner, as of one of

numerous elements in our present experience but ;
as of the principal and central object of their atten

tion to which everything else is secondary and
subordinate.
As we cannot enjoy this face to face vision, so
neither possible for us during our mortal life to
is it
be continually conscious even of God s veiled

presence. For, in the first place, whereas the
brightness of His face draws the eyes of the blessed
so irresistibly that they are absolutely unable to
avert their gaze, the contemplation of His hidden
presence needs an exertion of the attention.
In the former case, as far as attention is con
cerned, the mind is passive; it is difficult, nay,
impossible not to attend but in the latter, the
;
mind is active, and not to attend is easier. It is

well to observe this difference between passive and
active attention. Abstraction may be either a
power or a weakness, a matter of self-control, or
of want of self-control. In the latter case, when
it diverts the attention from something else, wholly
or in part, it should rather be called distraction.
Albeit the blessed are passive in their enrapt
abstraction, yet the rapture is not of defective
weakness, since no finite will can resist the draw
of infinite beauty.
But in this life we have to seek God if we would
find Him ; we have, to some little degree, to exert
ourselves, to open our eyes and keep them open ;
to watch and to listen to school ourselves to a

;
greater delicacy and readiness of perception.

There have been indeed men of holiness and deep
thought, who have maintained that God is always
confusedly present to our consciousness, that He is
mingled in our every momentary experience as the
central strand round which the rest are woven; that
as we own weight, though
are always conscious of our
normally it makes no separate impression on our
memory but only in states of weakness and weariness,
or as we are always conscious of the air we breathe
or of the light in which we walk, or of the health
which we enjoy, although no disturbance of these
conditions concentrates our attention upon them
as upon a principal object, so God is the most
universal, constant, and essential condition of all
our experiences, the spiritual light without which
we can see nothing; and yet just because of this
38 THE PRESENCE OF GOD,
unbroken regularity, evenness, matter-of-courseness,

it is impossible for us to separate this light from
the objects which it reveals to us, or to attend to
it as to a distinct and principal As all the
object.
colours which we see with our bodily eyes are but
various limitations of the colourless light under
which we behold them ; so (they conceive) all finite
being is but a limitation of one infinite Being, in
which it lives, moves, and exists ; and is intelligible
just so far and no further. God is, as it were, the
intellectual light, by sharing which all these finite
things become visible to the eye of the mind. We

do not see that light apart, in its purity but only ;
in combination with the object which it illumines,

and which shows off,, so to say, some one or other
of its infinite potentialities. As open to misunder
standing, through want of sufficient accuracy of
expression, this teaching has been authoritatively
condemned. For indeed it would seem to imply
that God, or the Divine substance, in some way
actually entered into the constitution of creatures
or received into Himself those limitations whereby
they from one another in kind whereas this
differ ;
can only be said of a certain abstraction of all finite

being which we call Being-in-general," which is in
"
a wholly different and infinitely lower plane than the

Divine being. This Being-in-general is a mere
" "
chimera of the mind whereby we give consistency

to God s creative activity after it has issued from
the Divine will and before it has been determined

to any specified effect as though ; God said Fiat,
leaving the object undetermined. It is of this
"
only that every creature is rightly con

"
being
ceived as partaking, or as limiting it to some one
phase of its infinitely various potentiality, even as
everything we see with our bodily eyes singles out
and reflects some one ray of those splendours of
which the seven-stranded sunlight is woven. Now,
in truth, God is the Sun from which the light of
finite being proceeds but He is the cause of that
;
light, not the light itself. It is through His presence

and His influence that all creatures have existence
and intelligibility; but what they partake is not
divinity, but an effect of divinity.
Close as He is to all things, intimately as He
permeates all finite existences ; yet He is a Light
infinitely different in kind from the light which He
imparts to them ; to us, unthinkable, ineffable. We
can at most touch the hem of His garment, but we
dare not face Him in our infirmity and littleness,
until He call us and bid us come Thou shalt call
:
"
me and answer Thee."

I will
must be our chief aim and study to live

Still it
as much as possible in His veiled presence. If we

cannot see His form, we can see His shadow if we ;
cannot hear His voice, we can hear His footfall if ;
we cannot touch His hands and side, we can touch

His vesture. We are surrounded by the signs of
His presence; and we must learn to read them
quickly, to pass swiftly from the sign to that which
it signifies, so as at last to
forget the sign and dwell
wholly on God. For a sign is first something
absolute in itself and afterwards something relative,
carrying the mind on to that which it points to;
and therefore it is possible for the mind to rest in

the sign finally without passing on at all. And this
is more true of those signs which are not entirely
designed and intended to lead our thought else

where. Smoke betrays the presence of fire and ;
a red light betrays the presence of danger on the

line but in the latter case the betrayal is designed,
;
which it is not in the former. God s works are in

some true sense designed and intended to reveal His
presence to us but still it is not their only end
; ;
and therefore it is most possible and easy for us to

think of them without thinking of Him, to rest in
the sign without passing on to the thing signified.
As children we read books without taking any
interest in the personality of the author ; but the
cultured and matured mind cares for literature
chiefly as a revelation of the soul from which it
sprang. Similarly with regard to music or painting,

which are loved best when they are loved as forms
of expression, as utterances of a spirit like our own.
How absolutely uninteresting, because soulless, is
all manner of machine-music and mock art, just
for the reason that the connection with the originat
ing mind isso remote, so much more than second
hand. It is not a sign of the presence of the artist.
We applaud the violinist or the pianist himself, and
not the instrument nor even the music regarded in
its own perfection. We
pass straight from the
excellence of the product to the greater excellence
of the producer. But who would ever dream of
applauding the most finished performance on a
musical-box or a piano-organ ? The distance from
effect to cause is too great and we rest simply in

;
the effect.
Now, if we cleave to our childish pictures
of God, if we take what might irreverently be
view the Deity, accord
"
called a clock-maker
"
of
ing to which He is conceived to have made the
world once for all, and wound it up, and set it
a-going, and to have retired to rest in an infinitely
distant Heaven then indeed we shall never be
;
able to cultivate a sense of the Divine presence.

But we hold firmly to the truth of reason and
if
faith, and reflect on it, time after time, until it

becomes not only a truism of the mind, but also
well worked into our imagination if we remind ;
ourselves repeatedly that all the play of nature and

the play of our own being, body and soul, is the
effect of God s most intimate presence who, if He ;
isnot the Soul of Nature, nor part of Nature, yet is

more intimate to all nature and more necessary to
its being and movement than our soul is to our
body then we shall gradually find ourselves passing
;
easily from the creature to God, with ever lessening

effort, and at last spontaneously with no effort at
all. And certainly love will accelerate the growth
of this habit. For where the treasure is, there will
the heart be also. We dwell most easily on that
which is most interesting. As has just been said,
our childish interest, unlike that of our riper
thought, is in the performance rather than the
performer ; but when we have realized that there
is nothing really interesting on earth but the human
soul, then we are carried from the lesser to the
stronger attraction. Who cares, of all on board,
what hand has kindled the lighthouse-lamp, save

one perchance who knows that it has been kindled
by the loving hand of wife or mother, and who
There it is " "
while others cry, whispers in his !
She Such different mind

"
there the
"
heart, is is !
with which men view the world according as they

have not or have learnt to read God s presence
everywhere. Dominus est
"
It is the Lord," says
the keen-sighted love of St. John. For as the

sensual by a selective sympathy find sensuality in a
thousand places where the pure-minded pass by
untainted or as the suspicious and resentful are
;
quick, too quick, to detect an affront so those ;
whose eyes are sharpened by love find God lurking

everywhere.
Let us not look on this exercise of the presence
of God as an affair of the imagination, as though it
consisted in a certain fictitious picturing of God
ever beside us, or before us, or behind us. Such
efforts tire the head and give a sense of unreality
to religion. It is really a question of opening the
sealed eyes of our reason and seeing what is every
where to be seen, within us and without us, above
and below, on the right hand and on the left ;
in all being, and life, and movement in Heaven ;
and earth on sea and on land, and in everything

;
they contain in all beauty and grace and strength

; ;
in all loveliness of form and colour in all sweetness ;
of melody and harmony, in all delicacy of fragrance

and flavour in all sensation, and reason, and
;
intelligence in all love, and tenderness, and affec

;
tion ;
in the fruit of man s mind and hand in the ;
utilities of industrial art ;

in the elegancies of
culture and refinement in the spirituality of liberal
;
arts ;
in the discoveries of science ; in the high
dreamings of philosophy. Still more is God to be
seen in the moral attributes of the soul, in what
soever things are pure, true, lovely, virtuous,
praiseworthy. Above
be seen and all, is He to
heard in that highest point of our soul, where our
being runs into His as the stalk which buries itself
in the earth that begets, supports, and nourishes it,
namely, in conscience, which cries to us, Cleave "
to the with a voice that

is in us, but not of
right,"
us ;
the voice of onewith us yet over us. who is
For we walk not alone, but ever side by side

with God, whose arm is round us, whose lips are at
our ear, even when we are deaf to His whisper :
Lava ejus sub capite meo et dextra illius amplexabitur

me His left hand is under my head and His right
"
hand embraceth me." So the soul walks through

it is
the desert of life leaning on her Beloved. Etsi

ambulavero in medio umbra mortis, non timebit cor
meum quia tu mecuin es ; virga tua et baculus tuus
ipsa me consolata sunt
"
Though I walk in the

midst of death s shadow my heart will not fear,
for Thou art with me, Thy rod and the staff have
consoled me." Conscience is the rod and staff
of our gentle Shepherd, who thereby checks and
stimulates us alternately that we may not run
forward or lag behind, or in any way be parted
from His side ; and if we have not grown callous
to this salutary sting and discipline, what greater
consolation can we have than such evidence of the
presence and care of the Shepherd and Lover of our

Thy crook and Thy staff are my conso
"
souls?
lation."
Enoch walked with God

"
and was not ; ;
for God took him." Such is the history of those

souls who listen to the voice of the Shepherd,
who are conscious continually of a sort of double
personality, of being God s yoke-fellows, one of a
twain, of suffering and acting with God, thus
"
splitting up the simple of their unreflecting

"
thought into we," and finding another personality

"
intertwined with their own.

Finally, God is to be seen by those whose eyes
are open, in all the workings and dispositions of
His providence, from the least to the greatest and ;
when the unenlightened cry out It is fate it is :

"
fortune it is necessity of nature," faith and reason

;
say,
"
It is the Lord ; let Him do what seemeth

good unto Him ; and
"
:
"
Into Thy hand I com

mend my spirit," and, My lots are in Thy hand."
"
Let us not then look on this practice of the

presence of God as one of many devotions which
we are at liberty to take or leave for it is the ;
great work we have come into this world to do.

To see God is eternal life, both here and hereafter ;
here, through a glass darkly there, face to face. ;
We are here for a while that our weak eyes may be

gradually accustomed to that dim but growing light
which heralds the sunrise of eternity that we may ;
not be blinded by the brightness of His coming.

GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
"
Conscience
the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet
is
in its informations,a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest

in its blessings and anathemas, and even though the eternal
priesthood throughout the Church should cease to be, in it

the sacerdotal principle would remain and have a sway."
Newman.
IT is much to be regretted that the word conscience " "
has come to be used

"
dictate of conscience
"
or
indiscriminately for two very distinct acts or utter
ances of the mind for the moral judgment which
indicates to us what is right or wrong in human
conduct; and for the command which bids us follow
that indication. In either sense conscience may be
called the "voice of God," though more properly in
the latter.
In our moral judgments God speaks to us no
otherwise than in any ordinary utterance of our
understanding or our reason. Inasmuch as He
has created our mind to be in some finite way
a mirror of His own, and co-operates with all its
vitality and movement, and tries, so far as we will
permit Him, to flood and permeate it with His
light, it follows that whatever truth it tells us,
He may be said to tell us indirectly, and through
the instrumentality of the mind :
indirectly for
in every judgment the mind truly speaks, and is
not a mere passive instrument of conveyance. It

46 GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
originates in itself, not indeed without Divine assist

ance, the word of truth which falls upon our inward
ear. But except with regard to a few first principles,
which are in a certain qualified sense inborn and
irresistibly evident, the mind is subject to much
contingency in its inferences and deductions about
right and wrong which there is room for endless
;
in
deviation and error. So far as the mirror of our
reason is flawed or flaws itself, and thereby distorts
and perverts the Divine Reason which it is made to
reflect, it can in no sense be said to speak to us with
the voice of God. It is indeed, in virtue of its office,
God s appointed messenger, delivering to us the

determinations of His will respecting our conduct
and happiness, but it is a fallible messenger, whose
ear, whose memory, whose tongue may be often at
fault and who thus may convey to us a very garbled
;
version of the Divine message or command. Yet

conscience, in the sense of our moral judgment, is
not so absolutely untrustworthy as might seem.
There are tests and rules to be applied here, as well
as in the case of human witnesses, whose testimony,
under due conditions and restrictions, is a source of
certainty. There are occasions without number
where it is intellectually possible to doubt the
verdict of our conscience, yet where it would be
culpably imprudent to pay any practical heed to
such doubt and there are other cases in which the
;
message is so palpably ambiguous and obscure as

to leave our liberty of action intact.
It is not our purpose here to examine the notion
of moral Tightness in conduct, which all know by
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 47
intuition to be so distinct from any other kind of

Tightness. Men wrangle over the analysis and state
ment of the idea, but as to its existence and separate
character are agreed. Like every other Tightness,
all
itimplies an end to be reached, and an order to be

observed in reaching it. A right action is one which
preserves or promotes a certain desirable order in
our conduct, that is, in our words and outward
behaviour, or in the inner working of our mind and
heart, so far as they are under our free government.
And a wrong action, contrariwise, is one which
induces a disorder in our conduct.
The end with reference to which our conduct is
said to be morally right or wrong, is that chief and

supreme end which God has created us to attain,
namely, the salvation of our soul here and hereafter
in the exercise of the highest and most ideal love.
This end is in a strict sense obligatory and morally
necessary, and therefore such conduct as is required
to secure it has a corresponding and dependent
necessity. But this necessity and obligation is made
up of two very distinct factors of two forces which
;
exert a sort of compulsion upon our will. Of these

one is our irresistible attraction towards our ulti
mate and complete happiness, and all that we
conceive to be inseparably connected therewith the ;
other is the urgency of the Divine will brought to

bear upon us in the dictate of conscience.
First then there is this implanted desire for our
own fulness of joy, our true well-being, our ideal of
rest and happiness a desire which we cannot resist
or put aside in any moment of our conscious activity.
GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
When once we recognize any action as inseparably

bound up with the realization of that desire, the
thought of that action begins to exercise a sort of
dominion over us, nor can we resist its power until
by some reversion or perversion of judgment we
divest it of that connection with our happiness
which was the secret of its sway.
"
If you will enter into life," says Reason,

keep the commandments."
"
It is not possible
for us to deny our wish to enter into eternal
life, and to attain the solid joy that attends that
life ; but we can shut our eyes to the necessity
of keeping the commandments, and in this way
we can resist the pressure and obligation which
Tightness exerts upon our will. Nature obliges us
to desire happiness, but does not oblige us to desire
any one method of life, except so far and so long as

we judge it to be requisite to our happiness. What
ever necessity and obligation there is, is from Nature ;
that is, from God as the author of the soul s essence.
To eat and drink is a necessity of our nature, but to

eat or drink this rather than that is left largely to
our choice.
all this necessity and pressure is from our
Yet
selves,from that implanted appetite which is part of
our being. So far, wrong-doing is only shown to be
high treason against our own truest interest, an
offence against self. But we cannot subvert any
designed and established order without offending
him who has established and willed it. If while
I am waiting in the library for a friend whom I am
visiting I amuse myself by deliberately disarranging
and mixing up the books which I see he has care

fully set in order, I cannot but be aware that besides
the material disorder and mischief I am
producing,
there is another evil of a totally different and more
serious kind for which I am responsible, namely,
the ruffling of my friend s temper. There is nothing
we should value so much as the reasonable esteem
and affection of others and therefore the thing we
;
should dread most isthe just censure and anger of

those whom we love and reverence. Whatever
servility there may sometimes be
dread of the in the
consequences of their anger, yet there is nothing

servile in the dread of the anger itself. Children
playing at keeping school will patiently accept
punishments, which inflicted in anger by their
parents or teachers would be received with passionate
tears showing that it is the implied censure and
;
displeasure which gives the punishment its worst

sting. Hence, the annoyance of my friend is the
worst consequence of my wanton mischief; com
pared with which the disarrangement of the books
is small and remediable. I can put the books in
order again, or can make some equivalent restitu

tion ;
but I cannot force my friend to be towards
me as before.
Every thinking creature is sensible, at least dimly

and confusedly, of being dependent on some personal
power which has put him into this world among his
fellow-men, and has given him a definite nature
with a definite work and a definite end, however
imperfectly recognized and therefore that the
;
ascertaining and carrying out of that purpose is

E
5o GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
not merely his own concern, but a duty which he

owes to another to whom he belongs ineffably and
absolutely. He finds, moreover, in his awakened
reason an instinctive love and desire for the objective
interests of reason and right order, quite irrespective
of his private and personal interests, which have at
times to give way to the more universal and impera
tive good. Hefinds himself angry against injustices,
which touch neither him nor his belongings, and
aglow for the cause of right and truth and order,
where no egoistic bias is assignable. And the growth
of this objective, disinterested love of Tightness is
checked or accelerated in the measure in which the
God-given instinct is yielded to or resisted. All this
points to the fact that his reason and will are given
him only to be instruments of the will of the
personal, subsistent Reason of God Himself, who
presses continually on the created spirit, guiding it
to an end of which it can have at most a partial and
instinctive perception, such as a horse may have of
the purpose of his rider.
Recognizing, therefore, that the order which
reason demands in our conduct with respect to
ourselves and to others is something dependent on
the nature of things established and willed by the
Supreme Reason, it is impossible for us to disturb
that order without being aware, at least in some
dim way, that we are incurring the anger and dis
pleasure of that personal Reason whose creatures
and instruments we are. And if the just censure
and anger of our parents and rulers is something we
should dread as a great evil, how far greater an evil
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 5i
is it to incur the anger of our Father who is in

Heaven, in whom weand move and have our
live
being, on the breath of whose love our soul hangs

for every instant of its existence and movement,
who should be the supreme object of our love and
reverence and praise, in friendship with whom our
final happiness consists. To have made God angry,
this is the greatest evil of sin. The disorder we
have caused in God s work, in our own soul, in
human society, however evil in itself, however
hateful to God, is a finite evil, for which a
repara
tion is conceivable. But by what means shall we
force God to turn to us again with favour,and to
restore to us the priceless treasure of His love ?
Here then is a new pressure brought to bear
upon us of quite a distinct order an appeal to our
;
need of being loved by God, to our dread of being

hated by God or, if we are still servile and selfish,
;
to our desire of the consequences of

being loved ;
to our dread of the consequences of
being hated.
It the pressure of will against will, and
is
person
against person. It is no longer a question of treason
against self, but of treason against God. No man
can really sin against himself, except in a meta
phorical sense, which splits his personality in two;
or which treats his lower and
higher will as two
distinct persons. But conscience
puts him en rapport
with a personality other than his own, and thus
deprives him of his falsely imagined liberty and
independence. It tells him he is chained fast to
another who is in a certain sense affected for good
or evil by his every movement, and that that other
is no less than his God and Lord ;

that he must no-
longer think of himself as 7, but rather as we ; since
no act of his soul bears upon self alone, but upon
self and God.
sense of the pressure of God s will
It is in this
upon ours that the obligation of conscience chiefly

consists.Whatever imperfect pressure may be put
upon us by our innate self-regard, it is as nothing
compared with that which is exerted upon us by our
equally natural regard for the Divine favour.
Let us then carefully distinguish conscience as the
sense of what is right, from conscience as the sense
of obligation or of a pressure exerted upon our will.
In the former case God speaks to us indirectly and
often fallibly through our reason, and tells us This "
is right, that is wrong." In the latter God reveals

to us infallibly His own will, and says, Do what "
you believe to be right do not, what you;

believe to
be wrong; and by this revelation our will is brought
"
into immediate contact with His, whether to yield

to its pressure or to resist it. Who does not know
from human intercourse, the difference between a
mere communication and exchange of ideas in con
versation, and the far closer shock of soul with soul
when anger or love is excited, and will meets with
will in conflict or in embrace ? It is as bringing
us into will-relations with God that conscience

differs so generically from any other act of our
mind.
But why, it may be asked, should we treat the
impulse of conscience as the voice of God, rather
than the impulse of passion or of any lower instinct
which is as certainly indicative of the will of Nature,

whose will is no other than the will of God ? The
fallacy of this objection lies in taking some one part
of our nature, some single spring of action, and
treating it as though it were the whole. Human
excellence is not the perfection of this faculty or of
that, but of all united under the rule of conscience.
Virtue for man means the subjection of the lower to
the higher, their harmonious blending. Meekness,
for example, or chastity, could not exist were there
not strong passions to curb, a self-centred attraction
to combat. All indeed is from God the force that
is curbed, and the force that curbs; but it is for
man to see that the thought of God s mind and
love, the Divine intention or ideal is fully, not
partially, uttered in his own conduct. The speech
may be marred and broken in the utterance, and
convey a distorted sense. No natural desire is
wrong or evil so long as it is shaped and modified

according to the pattern present to conscience but ;
when suffered to run riot, though the wasted force

is God s gift, yet its lawlessness is the fault of man.
We have different duties with regard to our
conscience, according as we mean by
"
conscience
"
the sum total of our moral judgments, or the pressure

of God s will upon ours urging us to follow those
moral judgments. The very same imperative obli
gation which forces us to do what we believe to be
right, forces us no less, and as it were inclusively,
to find out what is right, to correct, perfect, and
develop our moral judgment by all means in our
It will not hear of that moral
"
power. indiffer-
entism which considers it but little matter what

"
we we do it bond fide, believing it to

do, so long as
be right. He is no sincere friend of Right and
Truth, no sincere friend of God, who cares little
what offence he commits, what pain he gives, so
long as it is unintentional, who is indifferent to
True, the chief guilt, which
"
material
"
sin.
consists in the conflict of will with will, is absent r

if the fault be committed in blameless ignorance ;
but the lesser harm is not inconsiderable ;

nor can
it be a matter of indifference to one whose soul is
in sympathy with God and His ways. Such a soul
will make duty and most earnest desire
it its first
to learn the will of in the minutest detail. God

Its
whole aspiration will be that of the n8th Psalm:
Oh, let my ways be directed to the observance of
"
Thy justifications then shall ; I not be ashamed

when I shall have looked into all Thy command
ments. In my heart have I hid Thy Word that
I might not sin against Thee. Blessed art Thou,
O Lord, teach me Thy justifications unveil ;
my eyes that I may behold the wonders of Thy

law."
In all other matters we

are to some extent
bound to secure that our mind and reason shall
be, in its measure, a faithful mirror of the mind of
God, without flaw or tarnish but we are bound, ;
without any qualification, to a like care, where the

truth to be attained concerns the imperative will of
God touching the hourly conduct of our lives. It
is therefore our first
duty to educate and instruct
our moral judgment continually to observe, to ;
listen, to read, to ponder, to examine, to compare,

that by all means we enjoy the fullest attainable
light a matter so paramount.

in Our sources of
information are the first principles of morality and
their legitimate consequences, applied to our own
experience and the experience of others ; the tradi

tions of society, the examples of the good and
great the advice of those whose wisdom
; and
experience give weight to their words and then
;
for us Christians there is the revealed law of God,

the teaching and example of Christ and His saints,
the guidance of the Catholic Church in the con
sensus of her approved writers, and in the private
direction whereby her priests apply and modify
general principles to individual cases.
Obviously, as long as life lasts, our mind will be
capable of further perfection and exactitude in this
as in other matters. Never shall we be so skilled
as not at times to experience perplexities and to
need the counsel of others. Yet our progress should
ever be towards a greater self-helpfulness and inde
pendence of judgment in the affairs of our own
conscience. There is no doubt a false independence
which despises the ordinary means of light and
information, and strives to weave a priori cobwebs
for its own use. But there is also a false depend
ence which springs from a certain mental laziness
and timidity, and which seeks to throw the whole
burden of one s decisions on other shoulders. As
in the practical affairs of so in the
every-day life,
problems of conscience and self-government our aim

should be to profit in every way by the experience
and wisdom of others in order to advance beyond

it, and to form a power of judging for ourselves.
While we are yet without experience, and while our

reasoning faculty is as yet rudimentary, we must
submit to the direction of others who know better.
But if the child s hand is always held and guided by
the teacher, if he is never told that the end of such
help is to enable him eventually to dispense with it,
he will never learn how to write.

Similarly those
who make the voice of their spiritual director a
substitute for their own
conscience, who never use
the light that God
has given them in their own
reason and in the information they already possess,
become crippled and paralyzed as far as the faculty
of moral judgment is concerned. For the difference
between death and life is the difference between
that which is moved passively by another from
outside, and that which moves itself in virtue of
some inward principle which is part of itself.
Doubtless, as has been said, there are crises and
problems where the wisest and most experienced
are at a loss, and then it becomes a duty to have
recourse to those who are in a position to help us
to see for ourselves which is the best kind of
direction or else to command our faith and confi
dence in their claim to see what we cannot see.
But short of such extremes, it is the part of the
good educator and adviser not to help those who
can help themselves, and who in so doing advance
themselves towards a more perfect self-helpfulness.
Perhaps there is no more essential condition to
our growth in clearness of moral discernment, than
that of practical fidelity to the light that is in us.

Nor is the reason far to seek. It is repugnant to
our natural and almost laudable pride, to sin in the
full face of our better
knowledge whence comes
;
the inevitable tendency to justify our faults both

before and after we commit them a process which
involves a certain violent twisting or at least an
obscuring of our moral judgments about and right
wrong. Let these perversions be sufficiently frequent
and grievous and we soon fall under the natural
penalty of "judicial blindness," a state in which we
are culpably but really incapable of
seeing the truth,
and rush blindfold to our own spiritual ruin. Nay,
even in smaller matters of counsel and higher
per
fection, we are all continually tarnishing the clear
surface of that mirror wherein the pure of heart see
God and the will of God, as the sky is seen in
smooth water. The edge of our spiritual discern
ment is ever being blunted by rough usage, and
needing to be refined by self-examination and
correction.
Moreover, if mere intellectualism sometimes
makes us skilful casuists and gives us a sort of
delicacy of touch in dealing with the niceties of
conscience, yet practical fidelity to the right, and
an earnest desire to
live up to our ideals, will
give
us a far surer guide in that instinct wherewith love
feels and apprehends what will be most
pleasing to
the Beloved. Not that the act is purely blind and
instinctive, but so swift is the inference, so minute
and complex the data from which it is drawn, so
prompt the following up of the will, that memory
has no time to record the process, and leaves us

with the impression that we have been inspired or
impelled from without. This "taste" or "tact,"
which love begets in us, is certainly a far safer

and more useful guide than any power of reflex
reasoning, however highly cultivated. The latter
is not only more fallible in its process, but also is
confined to problems where the data can be fully

and distinctly grouped as the premises of a formal
argument a condition hardly ever realized in the
concrete. The way in which we recognize the
character of our own actions as right or wrong, is
something like the way a child discerns its mother s
pleasure or displeasure. It is done at a glance, and
with infallible certitude, but who shall give a satis
factory statement of the process, or answer all the

another might bring against the inadequate
difficulties
reasons given for the decision? For our mind appre
hends an action not under some one or more of its
formal aspects, but in its concrete entirety, in the
full clothing of its circumstances, amongst which
are our own character, personality, and antecedents,

the sum total of our innumerable and complex
motives, the clearness or unclearness of our vision
at the instant of action, the fulness or the imper
fection of our deliberation, the precise degree of
attraction or repugnance we experienced. This is
what we can never convey to another, what we
can never fully express to ourselves, so as to make
any formal and logical inference available against
the certainty of our intuitive judgment.
It is then by fidelity to the light which is in us,
and by availing ourselves of the means of instruction

provided for us, that we may hope ever to progress
towards a greater refinement in our power of moral
judgment. And upon this refinement our religious
faith largely depends. For the more we see in God,
and the more sensitive we are to His beauty, the
stronger is the bond which enslaves us to Him.
But it is in proportion as we ourselves are just and
merciful and patient and pure, that the purity,
justice, and meekness of God and of His Church is
appreciated and loved by us. Without that, no
dialectic founded on prophecy and miracle, no
"natural theology," be of any service to us,
will
either to win us, or to preserve us, or to recover
us. On the other hand, fidelity to conscience must
infallibly bring with it sufficient faith for salvation,,
and moreover will change the dry stick of barren
orthodoxy into an ever-growing intelligence of the
things of God. If thy heart were right, then
"
would every creature be unto thee a mirror of life

and a book of sacred lore for there is no creature
;
how small and mean soever, but reflects some ray

of God s goodness. Wert thou but inwardly good
and pure, thou wouldst see everything easily and
understand it clearly. A pure heart pierces Heaven
and Hell with its gaze. According to what we
ourselves are inside, so do we judge of that which
1
is outside."
Moreover, faith rests on and springs from an

abiding sense of the duty of belief, from a permanent
recognition of God s will and command that we
1
A Kempis, ii. 4.
Co GOD IN CONSCIENCE.
should hold on blindly in the hour of darkness and

obscurity to the truths we were convinced of in the
hour of light and of clear intuition. For faith is a
hearing and an obeying. But the conscience which
has grown deaf to God s voice in other matters, is
in danger of this last degree of deafness, when
the soul no longer recognizes the voice of the
Shepherd ;
nor hears, nor follows, but wanders into
the darkness.
Up to this we have been
dealing with our duty to
regarded as the faculty of moral judg
"
conscience
"
ment ;
and we have seen how this department of
our reason demands special care and cultivation,
that it may become to its utmost capacity a reflex
of the mind of God, of that ideal which God desires
to realize in us if we will but suffer Him to show
us His will and to help us to follow it.
But conscience stands even more properly for
the pressure and inclination exerted upon our will
by the will of God, which is brought to bear upon
it as soon as the mind recognizes
"
to be the
"
right
term and expression of a Will. This pressure is a
reverential fear of God s anger as in itself the worst
of evils and a self-regarding fear of the consequences
of that anger and also a love of God s good-will
;
and favour as in itself our chief good, besides a

desire for the resulting advantages of His favour.
Here, again, we owe a duty to our conscience,
regarded now, not as a judgment of the under
standing, but as an inclination or bent of the will.
Every time we yield to this Divine stimulus, we
not only maintain, but increase our sensitiveness to
GOD IN CONSCIENCE. 6r
its influence. We become more and more filled with

a reverential fear of God s expressed will. Contrari
wise, if we grow callous and unimpression
we resist
able. Every time we brave God s anger we fear it
less, till at last we lose all fear, and become stone
deaf to that small voice whose whisper is
still
caught by those only who are on the alert.

Let us notice how distinct these two forms of
"
conscientiousness
"
are one from another. For

we may find a great delicacy of moral judgment
combined with a certain callousness of the will ;
and, on the other hand, a remarkable sensitiveness
of will \vhere the judgment is very ignorant and
erroneous. So, too, the words, lax, rigorous,
scrupulous, wide, and the like, are open to the same
ambiguity. Given the same moral judgment as to
the malice of a lie, one man will shrink from it far
less than another and given equal reverence for
;
the Divine will, one will judge that to be grievous,

or at least sinful, which another thinks little or
nothing of.
It is precisely in conscience viewed as an incli

nation of the will, that the soul comes in contact
with God its moral life.
as the author of In our
physical and psychical life, and to a large extent in
our intellectual life, God enters into us and displays
His attributes in us in spite of ourselves. His
power, His wisdom, His spiritual attributes, are
declared in the existence and operations of our
nature, in which He utters Himself in a finite
manner. But if He would display His moral attri
butes those, namely, which are essentially perfec-
tions of the free-will, perfect ways of choosing, He

must stand at the door and knock until by consent
we draw the bolt and let Him in. Then indeed He
enters in to sup with us, to permeate our soul with
His light and love, to fill her with a beauty not her
own save so far as she has not hindered the entrance
of Him whose presence is her sole beauty. Nigra
sum sed formosa she is of herself dark, but in virtue
of her Spouse she of beauty and brightness.
is full
Conscience is then, as it were, the little stalk by

which the soul is united to God as to the parent
of moral life hanging upon Him as the fruit
its ;
hangs on the tree. Through that narrow channel

the Divine life is poured into our spiritual veins, and
gives us our vigour and expansion, and full develop
ment and all that hinders that quickening inflow
;
impoverishes and weakens our soul. Through con

science God s ideal of our individual destiny, of that
final state which each one of us is capable of rising
to, is gradually transferred to our moral judgment,

wherein His thought is more or less imperfectly
reflected through conscience again, our will is
;
urged to realize the ideal thus set before us, and to

suffer God to assert Himself within us.
It is in recognizing God s will and presence in
the urgency of conscience that interior life consists.

Union and peace with God is but union and peace
with conscience viewed in a higher and truer light.
Here it is that God speaks to us not indeed as man ;
to man, but with a far closer and more intimate

communing, whereby without words or symbols we
are directly made conscious of His will. To the
unreflecting, conscience seems part of themselves ;

its voice seems their own so closely are God s
workings intertwined with those of their will and
reason. But reflection tells us that we cannot in
any true sense command ourselves, or disobey
ourselves, or fear our own anger, no more than we
can run after ourselves, or tell lies to ourselves, or
steal from ourselves.
The "
otherness
"
of God from ourselves, and of

the voice of conscience from the voice of our own
free resolves, needs but be clearly stated in order to
be clearly recognized and when once recognized,
;
our solitude is gone. It is not good for man to be

"
alone," is only so far true that, short of some

exempting condition or higher vocation, man is
fashioned and designed for the married state. But
of man s spiritual being it is absolutely and essen
tially true that he is not made to be alone, or to
live alone for one moment of his conscious life. He
is by his whole nature and
destiny an instrument in
the hand of God, even as the pen I write with is
wholly and altogether an instrument in my hand
designed to express my thought. Conscience is the
point of contact where God lays hold of this instru
ment, and inclines it to His own purpose. Inclines
"
"
it, for it is free and herein is not like the pen,

;
which has no self-perverting, self-destroying power.

And He inclines it not by a blind instinct, but by an
intelligent whisper, gentle in expression, but strong
and terrible in authority. And the resulting action
is of us twain, whether in agreement or in disagree
ment ;we are tied together God and myself, the
Creator and the created instrument which He

chooses to wield; we are joint principles of one and
the same act by which He seeks to express Himself
in my conduct and life. While God is to us He, " *
or even Thou," we have not yet realized that

intimacy which excludes all sense of distance and
separateness other than personal, and which dares
to couple together in thought as "we" and "us,"
God and the soul which He has wedded.

The sense of God s nearness and inseparable
intimacy to the hidden roots of our spiritual life has
been prominent in good men of all times, places,
and religions, who in one form or another have
re-echoed David s sentiments where he likens himself
to a sheep whom God leads forth to green pastures
and beside waters, checking him with His crook,
still
or urging him with His staff, so as to keep him ever

close to His side. "Though I walk through the
valley of death s shadow I will fear no evil, for

Thou art with me, Thy crook and Thy staff are my
consolation."It is precisely in conscience that we
feel these alternative checks and urgings, and find
therein an assurance of the presence and careful
watchfulness of "the Great Shepherd and Bishop of
our souls." It is in the obedient following of con
science that we arrive at the green pastures, and lie
down in peace by the waters of rest, and lack for

nothing. It is the sense that God is with him that
enables the conscientious man to bear calmly all

manner of temptations and persecutions and in
justices. "A
good man prides himself only in the
witness of a good conscience. Have a good conscience
and you will have an abiding joy. A good con

science can stand a great deal, and be very cheerful
in spite of troubles. A bad conscience is always
timid and fidgetty. You will rest very
sweetly if your
heart reproach you not. Never be glad
except when
you have done the right thing."
If there is a false
independence savouring of
arrogance, there is also a certain true inde
selfish
pendence and scorn of consequence," which has

"
characterized the really great and good of all

ages ;
and this is due mainly to the sense of

yielding
obedience to no creature but to conscience alone, or
else for conscience s sake. The Christian
(explicit or
implicit)can never yield to wealth or position, or
force or numbers
he is no respecter of persons to
;
;
God alone will he bend and thus he is fearless ;
when conscience justifies him, and he bears himself

towards all unjust usurpation with the prideof a
free son of God
Gloria justorum in conscientia sua et
:
non in ore hominum"The pride of the

just is in
their own conscience, not in the prate of men."
We
have compared conscience to a little stalk
which ties us to God, the source of our
spiritual
life, as the fruit is tied to the parent tree. To push
this illustration, we may notice that this bond may
be wholly severed, so that the fruit falls to earth
and loses vital connection with the branch or else ;
it
may be merely weakened or, it be ;
finally, may
strengthened indefinitely. Here we have a picture
of the bearing of our actions
upon our vital union
with God through conscience. There is a fatal
disobedience which separates us
wholly from Him ;
and a lesser disobedience which disposes us for a

fall and then there is a close following of the mere
;
wishes and suggestions of conscience, whereby we

are knit ever more firmly to God, and the channel
of communication between the soul and her Spouse
grows ever wider and freer. But whether in
matters of command or of counsel and suggestion,
the voice of conscience unheeded grows fainter and
fainter, and sounds as from a great distance, until
at last it dies away altogether. The change is in
us and not in God. He
has not gone far from us,
but we have gone far from Him, into a far
"
country," where we seek

freedom from the restraint
of His presence, and find slavery among the swine.
And if there He finds us out and pities and calls us,
and puts it into our heart to arise and return to

Him, still we have a long and painful journey
before us. We came downhill in the fulness of our
strength, we return uphill in the extremity of our

exhaustion. What hope is there for us, unless He
see us yet a long way off and run to meet us and
to cut short our weary labour ? In other words, to
recover the lost sensitiveness to conscience is a slow
and difficult task, impossible without God s grace.
The restoration of our perverted moral judgment is
comparatively easy. It is not hard to recognize

the fact that God was right and that we were
wrong; that the result of our "private judgment"
is that weare perishing with hunger, while the
mere hirelings of Heaven abound with bread. This
Peccavi, which is but the sentence of our own reason
upon our own folly, is the very first dawn of a con-
version (be it in small matters or in great), which

is perfected in that Peccavi uttered in the bosom of
God.
But it hard to quicken a sentiment that has
is
once been by resistance. It is hard to feel at

killed
will a fear of what we have schooled ourselves to
brave. We seem to need some new and far
stronger stimulus, if our heart is to be stirred. If
God should break the silence around us, and speak
to us with human voice and human words, we
should doubtless fall down terror-stricken and cry :
"
What
wouldst Thou have me to do?" Yet the
same God, heard in the far closer voice of con
science, has no terrors for us, so dependent are we
on habit and wont.
It is therefore to
preserve us from this callous
ness, and in some measure perhaps
to restore or
increase our reverential fear of conscience, that the
practice of examining is of suchour conscience
vitalimportance. Plainly this does not mean com
paring our moral judgments (as manifested in our
conduct) with received standards, such as the
Decalogue or the teaching of moralists. This is a
duty and an important one, as we have already
insisted but is quite distinct in its object and end
;
from that of examining our relation of obedience or

disobedience to that voice which says :
"
Do what
you believe to be right, here and now." It is one
thing to inquire: Did I do what was objectively

right ? another Did I do what I sincerely believed
:
to be right The
? first inquiry concerns the truth of
our moral judgments ; the second, the reverential
submission of our will toGod s. This latter is the

all-important inquiry which should be made, not
merely at stated times, which is well, but at all
times. Am I strictly conscientious ? Am I afraid

of my conscience ;
afraid of God ? Or am I
growing callous and indifferent, and to what extent?

Often, indeed, when the substance of the trans
gression is comparatively light, yet the harm done
to ourselves by violating conscience is considerable
and not undone; just as in the matter of
easily
perseverance, an offence which its isolation is trivial,
is most serious when viewed as a breach in that
chain of virtuous acts by which a good habit is

generated.
To notice an infidelity will not undo the harm
inflictedupon the will, there, indeed, it seems that
God s medicinal skill is needed, but it will stimulate
us to turn to God for forgiveness to beg restitution
;
to our former state or to a better ;

to make repara
tion to His Divine Majesty; and, above all, to arrest
further downward progress. The wholesale and
persistent neglect of this natural duty is to induce
eventually that blindness and hardness of heart
through which a man comes at last to crucify his God
without knowing what he is doing. This is the
natural result, but it is no less, on that account, a
divinely inflicted punishment, since all natural

laws are but the expression of the necessary will
of God.
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood
"
not in the truth because truth is not in him. When he

;
speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a l;ar and the

father thereof. But if I say the truth you believe Me not."
St. John viii. 44.
down, why doth it cumber the ground ?

"
"Cur it
says the master of the vineyard to his husbandman ;
speaking of the fig-elm which had disappointed him

year after year.
"
Nay," says the other,

"
let me
dig about the roots and nourish them and ; if then
it is still fruitless, let it fall." It is the work of
meditation to dig about the roots of our spiritual
life and to nourish them, to go deep into first
principles and strengthen our grasp of them, not

very attractive or easy work, nor productive of any
very sudden or sensibly violent moral revolution ;
yet in the long run, slowly and surely bearing

abundant and lasting fruit. Nor is it enough to
review, examine, and deepen our principles. We
must also judge ourselves by them contrasting with;
them our practice; clearing the mirror of conscience

and setting it before our face convincing ourselves
;
of sinfulness and of sin. But especially will it

conduce to that penitential spirit which is the very
root of self-reform, to clear and deepen our notion
yo SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
of the nature and malice of sin, whether regarded

and its effects, or as an offence against the
in itself
fear and reverence and worship we owe to God ;
more, against that absolute love and. devotion

still
which is His due.

And here revelation comes in largely to aid the
insufficiency of reason and to secure that, what
otherwise would be known only with difficulty and
hesitationby a few, may be known easily, certainly,
and universally and though we may never say that
;
revelation a strict exigency of human nature, yet

is
in this matter it is almost evident that if revelation

were denied to us, some substitute would need to
have been provided if our race was to rise from
barbarism to any sort of higher moral development.
Children, having no experience and only the
rudiments of reason, are not expected to know what
is good and expedient for them in conduct, or what
is hurtful and dangerous. They must therefore

believe and obey those who do know. We assign
sanctions to their conduct, we threaten them with
penalties and hold out rewards which will appeal
to them, and will supply the place of intrinsic
reasons until such time as they shall be able to see
for themselves, and to justify the judgments which
now seem to them arbitrary and severe. But are
we not all far less than children in respect to God ?
Surely the babe just born knows as much of the
world and its ways as the wisest of us can know
of the ways of God, whose sway stretches over
heaven and earth, time and eternity. How can
one whose eye rests but on the surface of things,
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 71
and ranges within the narrowest of circles for the

moments, pretend to join issue with Him
briefest of
whose thought penetrates all things, and estimates
the bearing of the first instant of created time upon
the last ? What definite notion can we possibly
have of that final result to which we and all other
creatures are being moved as instruments in His
hand, guided by a thought which is in His mind
and not in ours ? What likelihood is there of our
clearly divining the meaning and
scope of the
primary instincts of our conscience, of those in
explicable yet irresistible impulses in the interests
of right and truth and order, even at the expense
of our private and separate gain of those unselfish ;
sympathies with objective goodness dimly recognized

as the will of Him who creates us, whose we are,
and whom we serve ? Nor are we more likely to
grasp adequately the end and purpose of those
Divine commands and prohibitions which only reve
lation makes known to us. If nowhere else, at
least in the direction of our life to that end for
which God has given it to us, we need faith, the
simple obedient faith of little children. Our first
parents failed in this very point. They would be

as God, knowing good and judging right and
evil,
wrong for themselves they,

; from the level of earth,
would equal their view to His who is enthroned
above the highest Heaven. They would know the
why and wherefore of this arbitrary and irksome
prohibition and of this threat of death or else they ;
would take no notice of it, as being a violation of

their dignity as intelligent and self-governing agents.
72 SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
That this spirit of private judgment and unbelief

enters into every formal sin is what we shall see
a little later, when we come to consider sin in
the light of reason, as a disorder in itself and as
a personal offence against God. But reason is
useful in this matter rather as testing and verifying
the teaching of revelation, than as a guide or
exponent of the full truth. After it has told us all
it can there still remains a large residue of
tell,
mystery which we must accept on faith nor is the ;
grasp of reason sufficiently firm and unfaltering to

offer a purchase for the will when under the pressure
of acute temptation and blinding passion. In such
crises our reason is soon dazed and bewildered, and
if we cannot hold fast to God s Word we are lost.
Even could we reason correctly, from the fullest
data, on the subject of sin, yet we cannot always
be reasoning, least of all in the hour of temptation.
Besides this, our data are hopelessly inadequate,
while few care to face the trouble of thought and
reflection, and fewer still can think successfully and
fruitfully. Obviously, therefore, faith is God s
appointed means for our guidance we must receive ;
the Kingdom of God into our soul as little children,

or not at all.
It is certainly the weak point of modern Christi
anity that there is so little of this faith in us, filled

as we are with the narrow rationalizing spirit of
protestant self-sufficiency. It is in the air, and we
inhale the poison at every breath. are disposed We
to make, each of us, a god for himself, accommo
dated to the subjective peculiarities of his under-
standing, who shall be entirely comprehensible and

free from mystery, whose commands and prohi
bitions shall be perfectly explicable by the principles
of human conduct and government but the notion
;
of receiving God as He has revealed Himself

objectively, of taking difficulties as an indication,
not of error in that revelation, but of error in
our own mind, from us. In this spirit we
is far
argue, as Eve did, not from the revealed punish

ment of sin to its internal and natural malice but ;
conversely we examine sin itself, weighing it in our

faulty balance, and then rise up in rebellion and
declare we will not believe that it can ever merit
eternal punishment. We do not see what harm
can come of our transgression and hence we
;
boldly pass to unbelief: "Hath God said ye shall

surely die ? Ye shall not surely die."
Now it is the nature of our finite intellect to
judge the seed by its fruits, and not by an intui
tion of its hidden capacities. We argue from
effects to causes from appearances to their parent
;
realities ;
from shadows and consequences to sub
stances and antecedents. We
cannot see directly
into the heart of a thing as God can, but we have
to wait until it unfolds itself. And therefore, that
we might not have to learn the nature of sin by
bitter experience, and when perhaps it was too late,
God gave us a revelation of the ultimate fruits and
consequences of sin. He showed us how, of its own
nature, it led to eternal death, so that believing His
word we might be assured that sin is a far greater
evil than we can ever expect to understand for
ourselves. So it is that a good Catholic should

view the question, and in the same day that we
cease to be guided herein as little children, and
insist on judging for ourselves, "we shall surely
die" Movie moriemini.
It is, then, by meditating on these revealed con
sequences of sin that we shall most solidly establish

in ourselves that spirit of holy fear in which we are
so wanting in these days.
Yet fear, like hope, has a double object, one
direct and impersonal, the other indirect and
personal. I hope for eternal happiness and it is ;
to God I look for the realization of this hope.

Again, I fear eternal death, and it is before God I
tremble as the Just Judge who will inflict this
punishment on the unrepentant sinner. Here, for
the moment, it is our aim to cultivate a fear of the
person rather than of the thing of the anger of ;
God rather than of the consequences of that anger.

For as it is essential to our happiness to be loved
of God, so it is destructive of the same to be the
object of God s hatred and anger. In other words,
God s anger is a greater evil to us than any of its
consequences though when we are utterly hardened
;
and how God regards us, the fear

indifferent as to
of the consequences of His wrath will sometimes
prevent us from falling, or will recall us to repent
ance. The fear of God is therefore a higher motive
than the fear of Hell.
Either fear, however, is rightly said to be the
"
beginning of wisdom," or of that perfect love

which casts out fear. St. Augustine likens it to the
needle which passes through the texture, but leaves

the thread behind it. For when fear is wakened in
the sinner, he begins forthwith to cast about for a
road of escape from the consequences of his sin,
whereby he may flee from the wrath to come."
"
And there but one road open.

is If thou wilt
"
enter into life, keep the Commandments and ;

"
these Commandments can be reduced to one the

sovereign law of love Thou shalt love the Lord
:
"
thy God withthy whole heart and soul and strength."

Hence by recourse to prayer and to the sacraments
he seeks to kindle in his heart once more the flame
of Divine love.
And while this love is yet feeble and imperfect,
it needs often to be backed up and supplemented
by fear not being of itself strong enough to with
;
stand the more violent assaults of temptation.

But when love is mature and perfect, then fear
is said to be cast out; "for," says St. John, "fear
hath he who needs the spur of fear
torment," i.e.,
always actswith repugnance and

unwillingly, as
one who chooses the less of two evils and finds no
joy in his choice. Whereas he who endures out of
love alone, counts the suffering as
nothing.
Yet, as Aquinas explains, it is not strictly fear,
but the servility of fear, which is cast out
by perfect
love. It is called servile, because it is the motive
of a slave who obeys because he must, and not of
a son who obeys with love and has one common
interest with his father, or of a free soldier who
obeys his captain for love of their common country.

When we obey and serve God for love of His glory,
and out of sympathy with Him and His cause the

cause of Truth and Love and Justice and Holiness
and Order then our obedience is filial and not
servile. But as long and as far as we need the lash
of fear, we are slaves. Yet even when love is
perfect and fear can afford to be idle and rest from
active co-operation in our life, we must not suppose
that the motives of fear have been in any way
weakened, or that, like a disused organ, it becomes
atrophied and withers away. It is there all the
time, as an inner barrier, ready to come into use,

should the outworks give way through any mis
fortune. Thus St. Ignatius, in his Book of the
Exercises, bids me pray that at any time, through
if
my fault, the love of God should grow cold in my
heart, at least the fear of Hell may check me in
my downward path, and turn my steps upward once

more.
In truth, the fear and the love of God must
grow step by step together, because fear the very is
back-bone and strength of that love. It is not
something to which love is added and superimposed,

but is a constitutive element of love. For love is
not excited by some of the Divine attributes, as fear
is by others, but by the whole complexus, by the
Divine character in its entirety. Servile fear, indeed,

isbegotten of a partial and imperfect view of God s
face ;
it sees only the severer attributes justice,
might, majesty, wrath it

;
hears only the lower
notes of the chord, but is deaf to the higher and
sweeter tones which combine with them into a
perfect harmony. Those who do not know the
greatness of God do not know His condescension ;
those who have no conception of His justice have

no conception of His mercy. We must tremble at
His wrath, before we can marvel at His patience
and gentleness we must be deafened by the thunders
;
of Sinai, before we can be subdued by the still small

voice of conscience. And all that nourishes love,
nourishes fear also; for indeed, who were more
alive to the severity of God s judgments, and the
heinousness of sin, than those who were furthest
removed from the servility of fear the saints and
the Blessed Mother of God herself? Let us be
assured that no tenderness of emotion, no thrills
of ecstatic ardour, are any proof of Divine love if
the spirit of fear is absent. The Seraphim, who
are on fire with love, veil their faces before God ;
and when St. John saw Him he fell at His feet as

one dead. Now-a-days men have made themselves
a god who is all indulgence, softness, weakness,
fashioned in their own image and likeness a god ;
who isas agnostic, as indifferent to truth and right

as they are themselves whose love is as unrestrained
;
by self-denial as their own. But we worship a

Father who chastens those whom He loves and
scourges every son whom He receives; who is
1
a fierce fire, consuming utterly whatever it cannot

convert into its own nature who is an invincible
;
force, crushing to powder whatever it cannot carry

along with it. It is either a blessed thing or a
fearful thing "to fall into the hands of the

living
God a blessed thing to fall into the hands of His
1
Hebrews xii.
love ;
fall into the hands of His
a fearful thing to
anger. For anger and hatred of all evil is but
another dimension of the love and desire of all
good and where this latter is absolute, irresistible,
;
infinite, the former must be no less so.

In his Exercise on Sin, St. Ignatius 1 would have
us dwell first of all upon the fall of the apostate
angels, of which we have no obscure statement in
revelation, albeit the not given to us.

details are
It is commonly and very reasonably believed that
whereas man, the lowest spiritual creature, comes
to his fulness ofknowledge gradually, and through
a process of alternate blunders and rectifications,
the unembodied spirits receive the full measure of
their natural light in the first instant of their
creation. Existing out of time, free from the slow
successions of natural change, they have no infancy
or adolescence, but are produced in their perfect
maturity. Thus, the good and the true is presented

to their choice fully and clearly in the first instant
of their being, to accept or to reject nor does there ;
await them any new aspect of the question which

might alter their judgment. Whereas to every
man, the good and the true is offered under a
thousand inadequate aspects, time after time, until
the appointed measure of light by which he is to
be judged has been accorded to him a measure
manifestly differing for different individuals.
Hence it is accepted usually that the fall of the
angels was the work of one sin, accomplished in
1
This and the following discourse are developments of the first
two exercises of the First Week."
"
SIN JUDGED BY FAITH. 7g
one instant. The precise nature of that sin, or

how temptation could originate in a purely spiritual
being where bodily concupiscence and mental in
firmity found no place, does not directly concern us
here. They are rightly said to have fallen through
pride. For pride nothing else than the rebellion
is
of the member against the head; the desire to be

absolute and independent instead of the
subject;
preference of one s separate and solitary advantage
to the good of the whole whereof one is but a part.
It is the self-centralizing,
self-exalting tendency let
loose from the yoke of reason to run its
course, and
not restrained to the service of God, and
by the
higher law of universal good.
Nor must we confound the conflict between
nature and grace, between the
higher and the
lower will, between truth and error, between
reason and disorder, with the of mind
struggle
against matter, of spirit against sense, which goes
on in our human nature, compounded as it is of
soul and body. In the worst of men we
may at
times, not often perhaps, find the flesh subdued to
the spirit, or at least not rebellious. There may
be a complete control of the passions and
feelings
induced by pride, ambition, or even diabolic malice.
There is such a thing as a victoria vitiosa, when one
vice dominates over all the rest and subdues them
in its own interest. But where passion is absent or
subdued, there may still be sin in the spirit for its ;
tendency is not simple but complex. And so in the

disembodied spirit, merely because it is a creature and
finite, there is not a simple, but a double
appetite or
8o SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
tendency a resultant of two forces, one making for

self-preservation, self-preference, self-development ;
the other, using this force, checking it and directing
it to the universal and objective good, that is, to
the glory of God, whereof every creature is before

all else an instrument. I do not say two appetites,
but one complex appetite, which sin can resolve

For the good or end
"
into discordant elements.

"
of every being corresponds exactly to its nature.

Every finite
being is primarily for
God, secondarily
for itself in order to God. Were these two ends
wholly disconnected, there would be two appetites.
But since one is subordinate to the other, they
harmonize into one complex appetite. If there is
discord through sin, then as death is the severence
of body and soul, neither being complete without
the other, so here also severance is moral death.
And it is in approving or in disturbing the due
balance of these component forces that free-choice
is exercised. Pride consents to the claims of self
and turns a deaf ear to the claims of God and
Truth.
It is our love that
is free. It is not enough to
see the truth and to see it clearly; we must also

love it. The angels saw with perfect clearness their
true position as creatures of God. They saw that
their own good should be subordinate to the universal
good ;
that they were intended and designed primarily
for God and secondarily for themselves. They
recognized clearly in themselves fundamental in
stinctive tendencies in harmony with this double
nature and destiny of theirs. And yet being free
to know and
love this plan, and throw themselves
into they chose otherwise.
it,
And now we have to pause and see the terrible

ruin wrought by one sin in these the most
glorious
of God s and then learn what a deadly
creatures,
poison sin must be. As was the excellence of their
nature, the height to which they were called, such
was the depth to which they fell, and the vileness
of their corruption. Human nature, falling from a
lesser height, was not so irreparably shattered to
pieces, nor can any lost soul of man know the full
anguish of that "fire

prepared for the devil and his
For the capacity of suffering, like the
angels."
capacity of joy, is in proportion to the fineness and

delicacy of the spiritual nature. What are the pains
and pleasures of some sluggish reptile
compared
with those of the highly organized frame of man ?
Similarly the angelic intellect suffers a perversion in
such sort that they who are by nature full of intelli
gence and understanding, and ministers of light, are
now changed into powers of darkness
"
the rulers
of the darkness of this world." This is notoriously
the effect of sin, to induce a
judicial blindness, so
that they who will not see when
they can, cannot
see when they will. Once bring a false principle
into any mind, and in
proportion as that mind is
more active and vigorous it will be reduced to a
completer and more utter confusion. A torpid mind
will hold the poison of a lie unassimilated
long
enough but where reason works
;
either actively,
the false principle must be thrown
out, or else the
whole mind brought into Now
conformity with it.
8a SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
what is effected in the human mind by a gradual

process of leavening, is effected instantaneously in
minds unfettered by time and cerebral limitation,
such as those of the angels. Hence we can imagine
the total and radical revolution caused by sin in the
angelic intellect, inducing a confusion like that of a
panic-stricken army in retreat. Nor does this mean
a change in their essential nature but only a state
;
induced by their irrevocable free choice of a lie, to

which they must cleave for ever, having passed into
their eternal and unchanging condition.
What tastessweet to a healthy palate tastes
bitter to one which is disordered. God, who is the
final perfection, the supreme desire and the joy of
the sound and healthy will, is the torment and horror
and death of the will perverted by sin. For it is at
once violently drawn towards Him by the funda
mental and ineradicable instinct of its nature, and
yet driven back in consequence of its self-induced
antagonism to truth and goodness and thus it is
;
racked and straitened unceasingly. It is as when

one whose eyes are weak with disease is compelled
to endure a glare of light tolerable to none but the
strongest vision. Thus the whole force of the angelic

will is turned from love to hatred and there is no
;
hatred so bitter as that of what we once loved most

ardently. To the fallen angels, God, and man (the
image of God), and love, truth, justice, holiness,
order, beauty, harmony (the cause and interest of
God), are all as hateful as they are dear to the saints
and unfallen angels. And all this ruin is in a true
sense the natural effect of sin ;
of trying to stand in
stiff opposition against the irresistible onrush of

God s will and God s love. And when we
say it is
the natural effect, we do
not deny that such penalties
of sin are inflicted by the will of God. For all
natural effects result from the will or inclination of
nature, which is in truth the will of Him on whose
nature natural laws depend.
all For it is indeed
the personal will of God which moves in all nature,
physical and spiritual, and is expressed in the laws
of nature. There are certain unessential determina
tions of the law of sin s penal consequences which
may depend on God s free-will, but the substance of
the law is from His necessary will, from the very
nature of things in themselves, that is, of God in
Himself. If a man leaps over a precipice, he cannot
blame the rocks below for dashing him to pieces ;
nor can we blame God if, when we wilfully fling
ourselves against the immoveable rock of His truth
and love, we are shattered to atoms and eternally
destroyed. We can only blame ourselves, our own
free choice.
But how can a God of love entrust His creatures
with such a power of self-destruction ? Here again
we are complaining of the necessary will of God, as
though it were His free-will. The power of choice,
like every other grace, is given in resurrectionem ; for
our help, not for our hurt it is intended for use, not
for abuse. If it is used for our hurt, in ruinam, that
is no part of God s will or design. Yet from the
very nature of the gift it must be capable of abuse in
those who are yet in a state of imperfection and
probation.
Self-formation, self-movement is the very idea of

life. An animal is not a machine moved by God as
by an outside force ;
but it forms and moves itself
in virtue of internal principles which obey God s

will, and God s will is no physical or mechanical
force.
the dignity and privilege of the created
It is also
spirit and of intelligent life, to be self-forming. We

become what we love we are true and good and
;
great by freely loving and choosing goodness and

truth and greatness we become divine by choosing
;
God. He puts before our eyes as an end to be

reached, as an ideal to be realized, a true self as
opposed to a false self. He offers us life and death,
sweet and bitter, and leaves us free to enter into
one heritage or the other.
The human spirit determines and forms itself to
some degree in its every free choice. Each act is of
its own
nature a step taken in the right direction or
the wrong. It is implicitly a choice of an ideal
happiness in which God holds, either the sole

place, or at least the first place, or else in which
something takes precedence of God. But the angels
formed or misformed themselves finally and irre
vocably in their first choice made in the full light
of all the knowledge of which they were capable.
The contemplation of this ruin which the fallen
spirits wrought in themselves by their

sin ought to
breed in us that double fear of which we spoke

above first, a fear of those evil consequences them
;
selves, which is altogether prudential and self-

regarding ; secondly, a great personal fear of God,
from whose necessary will and law all these terrors

proceed, and of whose past anger they are the effect
and expression. For indeed that anger itself is
more to be dreaded than any of its consequences,
since our greatest good is to be loved by God and ;
our greatest evil to be hated by Him.

We must therefore look back over our life of
continual rebellion against the voice of our conscience
and of our better self, against the voice of God
within us, and think how great a weight of indig
nation we have been storing up against ourselves,
albeit God s mercy has so far restrained the storm
from bursting upon us. No man ever violates the
laws of nature with impunity. The vengeance may
be slow, but it is sure. And the law of conscience
is just as inexorable, being no less an expression of
the same invincible will and love.
Yet in both orders there is room for miracle ;
for the intervention of God s free-will, which can

supplement and determine, without contradicting
the natural and necessary course of things. He
who can heal the sick and raise the dead with His
word, can call the soul back from corruption He ;
who made a way through the Red Sea, can hold

back the billows of wrath already curving over the
sinner, ere they break and overwhelm him.
If we now turn to the story of the fall of our
first parents, the same lesson of sin s deadly character
is brought home to us again. We must dwell upon
the world as it would have been had Adam never
sinned nor forfeited all those preternatural pre
rogatives and conditions of nature by which God
designed to raise this earth to a paradise, to make

it Heaven itself. We must eliminate
the vestibule of
sin,and concupiscence, and ignorance, and sickness,
and death from this world, and people it with
inhabitants who in happiness and holiness would be
more akin to angels than to men such as we are.
And with all this we have to contrast, not the
present world, whose corruption is mitigated with
the leaven of Christianity, whose despair is quelled
by the hope of redemption, but rather with such a
world as this would have been without the Gospel
and without all that light and grace by which it was
and is educated and prepared, so to say, for the
Gospel.
And measure of
this contrast presents us with a
the evil and of the vehemence of God s
of sin
abhorrence of sin, of His natural and necessary
antagonism to wickedness and pride. He had in
Adam raised man from the dust of his unassisted
frail humanity, to set him with the princes of his
people, almost on a level with the angels in respect

of light, and self-control, and immortality their ;
equal in point of supernatural grace their superior ;
in virtue of the prospective Incarnation of God and

His alliance with our family. He had made him
littleless than a god, crowning him with glory and
honour. But being in honour man had no under
standing. He would not be less than a god, but
equal to God in the discernment of good and
evil and thus in the pride of knowledge he became
;
as the beasts that perish. He would clamber to a

yet higher eminence than God had allowed to him,
and in the very act fell headlong to earth again,

maimed and crippled.
Finally, we may consider the revealed conse
quences of one single unrepented deadly sin. And
by a deadly sin we mean an act whereby the will
aims at an ideal of ultimate happiness in which the
possession of God and submission to Him does not
hold the first place, but is sacrificed to something
else. For in every free act, as has already been
said, we make for some such
implicitly ideal. If
the act of own nature and tendency
its is incom
patible with God s supremacy among the
objects of
our a mortal or deadly sin.
final bliss, it is If it is
compatible with that supremacy and yet is directed

to some final object which is not itself referred and
subordinated to God, but loved besides and together
with God, in such sort that it makes for an ultimate
state of bliss whereof God is the chief, but not the
only factor then the sin is venial.

"
He who mother more than Me

loves father or
is not worthy of Me," says God. It may be that
such a man loves God very tenderly and sincerely.
But he does not love Him with the love due to God
if God holds the second
place to any creature or to
all creatures put together. If, however, God does
hold the first and supreme place in his scheme of
happiness, then the welfare of his parents or children
may be an object of desire in two ways. First, in
such sort that he loves his child just in the way
God wishes him to love it, in sympathy with God s
mind and will in the matter recognizing his own
;
affection as God-given and as indicating God s will ;

SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
seeing God in the creature and the creature in God.

And such love is only an extension of the love of
God and its object is in a way united with God
;
into one complex object, and loved in harmony with

God. When all creatures are so loved, then a man
loves God
not only supremely, but solely, with his
whole heart. And this is the perfection of sanctity ;
a state which we have to strive to attain. Secondly,

loving God supremely, and being willing if necessary
to make the sacrifice of Abraham, a man may love
his child or his reputation or some other creature
ultimately and for its own sake, and in some way

co-ordinately with God, albeit in no sense supremely.
He may be willing for the sake of that creature, not
indeed to break with God, but to sacrifice God s
lesser interests in certain matters, just as a man who

would die for his country may shirk paying taxes and
other small duties of a good citizen. And such sins
are venial incompatible with perfect love, but not
;
incompatible with sufficient and substantial love.

God preponderates in the affections, but He does
not satisfy and absorb them entirely. 1
1
As the difference between venial sin and imperfection is a
source of difficulty to many, it may be well to note that "imper
used positively and negatively.
"
fection is Positively, for a

deficiency of some perfection that is due and obligatory ;
as e.g., we
speak of an imperfectly formed letter, meaning a misformed letter.
It implies, however, that the defect is slight and not substantial. So
used, an imperfection in our moral conduct is the same as a venial sin.

Negatively, the term is used to denote the absence of some perfec
tion which is in no way due or obligatory, but which would add a
certain fulness and richness to the good action in question, and is a
matter perhaps of counsel. God is pleased if I am generous to the
poor more pleased if I am more generous but not displeased if I
:
;
Our Saviour reveals to us the natural conse

quences of deadly sin when He says, I say unto
"
you, My friends Fear not them that can kill the

:
body, and after that have nothing more that they

can do. But I will tell you whom you shall fear :
fear Him who, after He hath killed, hath power to

cast both soul and body into Hell, yea, I say unto
you, fear Him." And here notice that He speaks

to His friends to those whose hearts are now full
;
of loyal love for their Master. Yet neither they, nor

any of us, however fervent and devoted, can afford
to dispense with this safeguard of holy fear. And
who is it that speaks ? Jesus Christ, the very
am not more generous. If in some sense the more perfect act is

also the more reasonable, it does not mean that the less perfect is
positively unreasonable, but merely less reasonable, provided it be

entirely good, so far as it goes, and contain no positive disorder.
To make the better course always obligatory, to deny that an
action is good because it might be better, to exclude all
possibility
of exercising free generosity by works of counsel and supererogation,
is also to open the door to interminable scrupulosity and to make
our every action sinful as Luther would have it.
Thus when we speak of perfect love as a matter of precept,

"
"
and when we imply that in some sense it is necessary and obligatory

that God should entirely satisfy and absorb our affections, \ve mean
that to love ourselves or any creature with a love which is not
referable and at least implicitly referred to the love of God, is,
however venial, a positive imperfection, Such love is "perfect"
because it lacks nothing due to it. But that we should love God
with an heroic intensity of fervour, that we should explicitly and
frequently refer all our affections and interests to Him, that we
should be devoted and enthusiastic in His service, that we should
embrace the counsels as well as fulfil the precepts all this adds a
perfection and fulness to our love which, however reasonable, is in
no way due or obligatory, and the withholding of which, though
less reasonable, is in no positive way unreasonable, imperfect, or
inordinate ; but only in a negative way.
go SIN JUDGED BY FAITH.
Truth so calm and moderate and faithful in all

;
His utterances the same God who made man and ;
who made Hell; who became Man and died that

He might save man from Hell. He does not think
it a sordid thing to stand in awe of Him who is a
"
consuming
fire." He knows that such fear is the
very foundation and fibre of the tenderest and
only
enduring filial love and self-forgetful devotion.
"
Fear Him ; yea, I say to you, fear Him." How

He insists upon it ! Nor are we to forget that the
body to bear its share in the soul s destiny for
is
evil as well as for good and that the fire prepared ;
for fallen spirits will contain all the

virtuality of
bodily fire.
again He says,
And If thy right hand or right
"
foot cause thee to stumble, cut it off and cast it

from thee ;
"
that is, if your chief means of helpful

ness or of livelihood should be to you an occasion
of deadly sin; or if that on which your pre-eminence
and success in the race of life depends should
separate you from your allegiance to God,
"
cut it
off" a sharp, decisive, painful sacrifice "and cast
from you
"
it ; put it as far from you as you can ;
shake it off like a poisonous viper ; no regrets, no

looking back to the city of sin And if thy right !
"
eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee

"
if father, mother, child, spouse, or friend, if one who

is dear to you as the apple of your eye, dearer far
than life itself, even if such a one should stand
between you and salvation, pluck it out and cast "
it from no compromise, no quarter. Surely

"
you ;
this is a hard saying

"
who can bear it ? Yet it is :

"
only what is said elsewhere: "He that loveth father,

or mother, or child more than Me is not worthy of
Me." It is only what the conscience of great and
good men, pagan or Christian, in all ages have told
them, that the claims of truth and justice are
paramount that he who refuses if need be to
;
sacrifice his only son rather than lie, is not worthy

of the truth; that death is a less evil than merited
dishonour.
And why am I to nerve myself to such anguish ?
"
It is better for says our Lord.

thee," He does not
appeal to His own goodness, which claims my entire
love and service, but simply to
my prudential self-
regard. And He
assures me, as one who knows
and sees the Hell He is speaking of, that all I can
suffer in this life through loss of livelihood, through
failure, through and contempt, through
poverty
loneliness and separation and the rending of my
heart-strings, is not worth a thought compared with

the misery and anguish of that eternal, unchanging
state of destruction and spiritual death, that
"gehenna of fire where the worm dieth not and
the fire is not quenched." And if that is what
mortal sin means if that is the measure of its
;
hidden malice and of its vehement antagonism to

God s goodness, and, therefore, the measure of the
Divine anger and indignation which it necessarily
excites, have I not great reason to feel shame and
confusion at the thought of myself as I must appear
in the eyes of God, seeing what my past life has
been, and how persistently I have opposed God s

almighty will and love, constraining me through my
conscience, urging me ever onward and upward,

yet ever repulsed or at best unheeded.
And so I betake myself to the Cross whereon
God is dying in torments to save me from Hell and ;
I marvel and wonder

why it is He has singled me
out for so much mercy, and patience, and forgiveness.
I think what He might have done to me a thousand
times over, in all justice, leaving me to the natural

consequences of my madness and folly; and I look up
to His bleedingbrow and wounded hands and feet and
pierced Heart, and see what He has done instead.
O mira circa nos tucz pietatis dignatio ! O inestimabilis
dilectio caritatis, ut servum redimeres Filium tradidisti !
"
O wondrous condescension of Thy pity in our

regard ! O unspeakable tenderness of charity ! to
ransom Thy slave Thou didst deliver up Thy
Son And if the thought of His merited wrath
!
"
and indignation filled me with shame and confusion,

my shame is multiplied a hundred-fold when I
contemplate His patience and love. And then at
His feet with Mary Magdalene and in the presence
of His Blessed Mother weeping for my sins, I ask
myself what have I done for Christ in the past or ;
rather what have I not done against Him ? What

am I doing for Christ now ? What am I going to
do for Christ in the future ? And then I offer
myself to be His for ever. Domine, quid me vis
Lord, what wouldst Thou have me to
"
faccre ?
do?"
SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
"
We have never been slaves to any man how sayest :
thou : You shall be free ? Jesus answered them Amen, :
amen, I say unto you, that whosoever committeth sin is the

servant of sin." St. John viii. 33.
WE have now to ask ourselves what mere reason

can us about the nature of sin. Not that reason
tell
unassisted could ever have got as far as it can now

get since faith has gone before and pointed out the
way. Faith tells us many things that are well
within the compass of reason but reason would ;
never have thought of them if faith had not suggested

them.
There are times and moods for all of us all who
are human, and not wanting in that frailty which,
mingling with the higher and nobler elements of our
nature, gives it its characteristic pathos there are
times when we think that if there were no God, no
future life, no restrictions and prohibitions, life
would be aimless indeed, inexplicable, unmeaning,
yet forits brief span so much easier, more
painless,
more enjoyable, that we almost regret our high
destiny as sons of God, and envy those whose
consciences have grown callous to scruples and
remorse. The constant peace and blessedness of
God s service makes but a slight dint in our memory,
94 S/AT JUDGED BY REASON.
compared with the occasional crosses and restraints

which are the small price we pay for it. To our
ingratitude it seems that all that is right is hard,
all that is wrong is easy, that God s ways are
perversely uphill and narrow, and the ways of sin
broad and downhill and we never look to the fruit
;
and issue of one and the other.

the policy of Satan to represent our loving
It is
Father as an arbitrary tyrant, ruling us as slaves in

His own interest, or as an austere Master, reaping
where He has not sown and gleaning where He has
not scattered as one delighting in restrictions and
;
prohibitions for their own sake, and, as it were, in

order to find new occasions for the exercise and
display of authority. So it was that the tempter
argued with our first parents in Paradise, and so it
is that he tempts us all daily by whispered insinua
tions to that same effect. Well does St. Ignatius

speak of him as the enemy of human nature."
"
Hating God, he necessarily hates God s image and

likeness and all that God loves and his one aim is ;
to obliterate and defile the likeness, since his malice

is impotent against the original. Still more, ever
since God in Christ has wed to Himself the human
family, and thus raised man above the highest
enemy of human nature long to
"
angels, does the

"
degrade and profane what God has so exalted and

sanctified.
No, God is not arbitrary; and if His command

ment and discipline is grievous to us in our present
state, it is only because all growth and development
is necessarily attended with pain moral growth no
SIN JUDGED BY REASON. 95
less than physical. It involves the death of the old,

and the birth of the new, a continual process of
ceasing and becoming. It must be so in finite
creatures drawn forth from nothing and
reaching
their last perfection in process of time. It is the
nature of time itself, which is but the
dying and
passing away of the present to give place to the
"
future. Except a grain of wheat fall into the

ground and die, it remaineth alone but if it die it ;
beareth much fruit." Wherefore if God afflicts and

chastens us, it is not willingly (that is, with pleasure),
but reluctantly it is not merely because He chooses,
;
but because He must. It is not because He forbids

sin that it is evil ; but because it is hurtful to us,
therefore He forbids it. As necessarily and as
vehemently as He loves His own nature, so neces
sarily, does He love man, the image of His nature,
and hate all that profanes and defiles that image ;
so that God s absolute detestation and abhorrence

of sin is only another aspect and dimension of that
infinite love, wherewith He necessarily loves His
own Divine goodness. Nor even are the sanctions
with which He
enforces His necessary laws alto
gether arbitrary. Hell itself is as much the fruit
and outcome of sin as death is of starvation or of
mortal disease it is as much a natural law as the
;
sequence of poverty upon prodigality it is dependent ;
indeed upon the will of God, but not upon His free
will. Men are not sent to Hell, but they go there.
That he who walks over a precipice should fall to
the bottom, or that he who plucks out his eyes
should be blind, is necessarily the will of God as
g6 SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
are all natural sequences but it is not a result of

His free choice and arbitrary decree. "
Concupis
cence when it is conceived bringeth forth sin, and
sin when it is finished generates death," -by a
natural and necessary process.
However, it is not merely because it leads to the
everlasting torments of Hell that the path of sin is
thorny and perilous. Hell is the natural issue of
sin, just because sin is so bad in itself; it is the evil
fruit of an evil tree ;
it is sin worked out to its full
and unimpeded consequences, and given unrestrained

dominion over us. And, in like manner, it is not
simply because the steep and narrow way leads to
Eternal Life that it is to be preferred and followed,
but because it is the right way, the best way, and
really the happiest way because, notwithstanding a
;
certain amount of surface suffering, the yoke of

Christ isand the burden of His Cross is light
easy,
compared with the yoke and burden of sin because ;
Wisdom s ways are ways of pleasantness, and all
her paths are peace.

Limited as our point of view must be, and feeble
as are our powers of intuition and reasoning, yet we
can, to some little what
extent, see for ourselves that
God forbids bad for us in the long run,
is really
however pleasant it may seem at first. If we cannot
always understand the evil of one solitary sinful act
itself, and apart from all its consequences, yet we can
form such an estimate of those consequences, both to
the individual and to human society at large, as to
understand why God, who loves us so vehemently
and irresistibly, must be so inexorably opposed to
the first beginnings of such harm ;

so keen to stamp
out the first spark of so destructive a conflagration.
"Behold," says St. James, "how great a matter a
little fire kindleth." We
ourselves hate the very
name or even the suggestion of those things which
we have cause to know to be evil and hurtful ; and
similarly God s love for us leads Him to a pro
portional hate of all that is even remotely connected

with our spiritual misery and destruction.
Ifwe want to know what sin is and what it leads
to, we must not judge it merely by those effects
which fall under our eyes every day. For no one is
so thoroughly depraved as to give way to any sin
without the least attempt at restraint much less to ;
give way to all sins. Far less likely is it that society

at large or any great part of society should throw off
every yoke and abandon itself freely to evil inclina
tions of every description. Yet it is only by making
some such supposition that we can form any adequate
idea of the hurtfulness of sin. Let a man give way
to laziness and sloth without any restraint, and at
once we see life becomes impossible for him. One
such example of inertness is enough at times to
destroy a whole family and bring it to poverty and
misery. What if the whole family were made up of
such members ? What if all society were so consti
tuted ?
Plainly this vice alone whose seed is in
every one of us would involve the speedy extinction

of the human race were it let have its own way.
How soon and how utterly the habit of telling
lies ruins the moral character of its victims ! how
quickly it extends, and how deeply its roots reach
98 SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
down into the soul ! How incurable it is ! How it
paralyzes the gift of speech, whose purpose

is to
mirror the soul. And when the disease becomes
epidemic, how ruinous it is to mutual trust and
charity and reverence Yet perhaps we have seldom
!
met an wholly unmitigated liar who made no pre

tence whatever of veracity and even the most ;
degraded populations have offered some kind of

resistance to the spread of the practice. Perhaps
one lie in itself may at times seem utterly harmless ;
not only free from hurtful consequences, but

all
fruitful in good consequences, conducive to peace,

and and justice. But there is an infinite
charity,
distance between the man who has never lied, whose
veracity is still "virgin," and him who
has crossed
the line, and who has given proof that his allegiance
to truth not absolute, but qualified.
is It may be a
littlething, but like so many other little things, it

involves a great principle. A lie, as such, is an
apostasy from the cause of God a concession to ;
the cause of darkness and deception. It is only a

"
venial sin," one may say. Yes, but God would

rather see you blind, halt, and maimed than that
you should commit a venial sin so differently does ;
He judge of what is hurtful to you. A lie, how

harmless soever, how helpful soever, is in His eyes
like to the first plague-spot of a disease which has
swept nations off the face of the earth ;

it is a little
germ full of the most virulent poison, and with

unlimited powers of self-dissemination.
Wemay consider anger in the same way ;
the
suffering it causes to its victims and to all those

SIN JUDGED BY REASON. gg
around them ; what crimes it leads to blasphemy,

cruelty, violence, injury; yet rarely is it
wholly
unrestrained. What then if it had full play if it ;
were indulged in universally ? Who could live in

such a hell upon earth ? And so of resentment,
peevishness, discontent, sarcasm, ill-nature, pride-,
arrogance, boasting, meanness, avarice, selfishness,
fraud, dishonesty not to speak of coarser vices like
;
drunkenness and impurity. Let any one of them

run its course unimpeded, and it stands to reason
that it will destroy the happiness of mankind, and
make life, individual and social, altogether unbear
able and impossible.
It is,then, with the nature of things that our
quarrel is, and not with God. want to be free We
from the necessary consequences of our own actions;
to keep what we have thrown away we barter our ;
birthright for a mess of potage, and account our

selves wronged because we are held to our bargain.
We see clearly that it is by the repetition of
single acts that habits are formed and customs
become general; and that though no one act can
produce the effect, yet unless single acts are forbidden
absolutely, each man will dispense himself on every
occasion. And notwithstanding we act as the
improvident spendthrift who, regarding each indi
vidual economy as insignificant, saves nothing, and
ends in beggary.
Again, our reason and intuition tell us that our

whole nature is so designed and intended, that the
spiritshould have dominion over the flesh that we ;
should never be swayed by mere feelings, passions,

SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
and emotions, except so far as they have first been

summoned before the tribunal of conscience and
there approved. This is what we call self-control,
or being master of oneself; and every virtue or
moral strength is some particular form of self-mastery,
while every vice is some particular form of self- slavery.
Now, though we feel a sort of shame about merely
physical infirmities, to which we are necessarily
from
subjected, yet it is quite distinct in character
that shame we experience in being convicted of
moral weakness, of want of self-control where such
control is both possible and due, e.g., in being
detected in greediness, or meanness, or untruthful-
ness, or dishonesty. We
recognize that our nature
is
and distorted, nay, rather inverted,

thereby perverted
since what should be under is uppermost the flesh ;
leads and the spirit follows: Servi dominati sunt
nos tri" Those who should be our slaves, are our
masters." We the unmanliness of sin and vice.

feel
Indeed, we are wont to characterize this lack of self-

words which
mastery as effeminate, brutal, savage
all confess that developed humanity implies perfect
self-control. Hence even when we sin we invariably
try to deceive ourselves

and others by finding reasons
to justify our conduct, as though we scorned to act
on mere inclination or otherwise than on principle,
thereby tacitly confessing that

we are thoroughly
ashamed of ourselves for having acted otherwise.
And together with this natural shame at our
moral nakedness, there is a more or less explicit sense

of guilt or of offence committed against that neces
sary will of God made known

to us in the ordinations
of nature and in the design of our own spiritual

constitution a sense that we have not only marred
;
ourselves, but angered Him whose work and image

we are. All this, be
noted, is something quite dis
it
tinct from the sense of having merited the censure

-of our fellow-men, or the censure that our own
mind tells us we should pass upon another who acted
similarly. It is distinct, moreover, from the appre
hension of any pains or punishments our sin may

bring upon us, of any pleasures and rewards it may
deprive us of. These apprehensions may co-exist
with the sense of guilt and moral shame, and even
predominate in our thought where conscience has
grown enfeebled, but they are merely prudential and
self-regarding motives, born of a love, right in itself,
but no way akin to that unselfish love of objective
Tightness and of the Divine will which finds utter
ance in the dictates of conscience.
But besides all the positive harm which sin
works in us, we must remember that it excludes
and deprives us of that Divine goodness and
happiness for which we were created, namely, the
unselfish love of our God and Maker and of our
fellow-men in God and for God. It ties us down
to what is sordid and transitory; it founds our
happiness on the shifting sand, and not on the

eternal rock. Pride is incompatible with the praise
of God self-sufficiency with reverence ; self-seeking
;
with service. In every sense, therefore, sin is our

ruin and destruction ;
it is the death and corruption
of our soul and it; only because at present we
is
can drug ourselves with the narcotic of pleasure, or

of distracting excitement, and because the spirit is

not alone with itself but can pour itself out on
creatures, that we do not already somewhat experi
ence the torments of the damned by a faint fore
taste.
Yet all this objective harm and disorder, this
hurt to ourselves and to others, is the least evil of
sin, even as reason considers the matter. For our
conscience testifies not only to a violation of order,
but to a defiance of the will of the ordainer it tells ;
us that sin an opposition of person to person,

is
and of will to will; an unjust opposition of the

creature to its God and Creator of the feeble and ;
finite will to the omnipotent and irresistible will of
the Divine Goodness and Love. We feel that we

have made ourselves hateful to the All-holy and All-
mighty. To be loved, no less than to love, is our
last end or beatitude for all personal love is im
perfect and restless till it is mutual. We seek, not

God s gifts, but Himself, just as nothing
we give
Him and do for Him will suffice if we withhold our
very self. Sicut non sufficeret tibi, omnibus liabitis,
prceter me; ita nee mihi placer e poterit quidquid dederis,,

te non oblato As the whole creation could not
"
satisfy thee without Me, so neither can all thy gifts

satisfy Me if thou give not thyself."
1
As it is by
loving Him that we give ourselves to God and He
possesses us, so it isby loving us that He gives
Himself to us and we possess Him. To be hated
by God, to be the object of His anger and dislike, is
in itself, apart from all other evil consequences in
1
Imitation, iv. 8.
the way of punishment, the greatest evil that can

befall us.
And it is precisely as involving a resistance of
will to will that sin generates anger, like the steel
which strikes fire from the flint. know this We
from ourselves. However grieved we may be for
the hurt done to us, or the opposition offered to our
wishes by some inanimate or irresponsible cause,
we are not angry as with a person. But voluntary
opposition, especially if we conceive it to be unjust,
excites first indignation, which
annoyance, then
grows and gathers an angry storm-cloud, and
like
bursts at last in a fury of vengeance and reprisal. So
it is that by opposing the will and determination of
omnipotent Love, sin stores up Divine indignation

against the sinner, which when let loose from the
restraining hand of mercy, will drive him from the
presence and favour of God as chaff is driven before
the face of the tempest.
And here St. Ignatius would have me contrast
myself with God, person with person and to this ;
end first to dwell upon the absolute insignificance

of my own personality, as but one of the almost
infinite multitudes of men which have
peopled the
earth. A man may be somebody in his own house
hold and family; though even there he is soon
forgotten but what is he in a great crowd or
assembly ? what as one of a nation ? what as one
of a race ? and yet what is that race compared
with the numberless orders of spiritual personalities
which belong to the other world ? My moral and
personal insignificance therefore is hardly less than
io 4 SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
my physical insignificance as an atom of this

material universe, or as a solitary ripple on the
endless sea of time. And then I am to contrast
my frailty and weakness with the Divine strength
and endurance, my fleeting life with God s
eternity what am I but an autumn leaf that

;
trembles on the bough and is caught away by

the first breeze Folium quod vento rapitur, as Job
says on what a slender thread I hang
; What is !
my physical force compared with the forces of

nature what stand could I make against the rage
;
of the ocean, or against the earthquake, or the

thunderbolt what resistance could I offer to the
;
impetus of a planet what to all the forces of

;
the universe leagued against ? And yet God me

moves them with His nay, with the least
finger,
breath of His Love, of His Holy Spirit the Digitus
Dei. And it is against the infinite impetus of that
Love, against the omnipotence of that subsistent
Will, that I set myself when I sin. I defy the laws
not only of the universe, but of the Builder of the

universe I endeavour not only to turn aside the
;
course of Nature, but to change that Divine Nature

whence created Nature derives all her force and
necessity. Is it wonderful if sin issues sooner or
later in the destruction of the sinner ?
Further, in every sin I set up my judgment
against God s judgment ; my wisdom against His ;
I pretend to know better than He what is good for

me, what I ought to do. Or I refuse to obey
because I do not see the why and the wherefore.
I, from my little corner of this darkened cave of a
universe, guessing from passing shadows and gleams

as to what is going on above and beyond, pretend
to an equality with Him whose eyes are over all
the earth, and see from end to end of time. Yet
what do I know compared with so many around
me ? What, compared with the collective know
ledge of the race? And what is this, compared
with what is knowable to man and may yet be
known ? And this again is to God s wisdom and
knowledge as the light of a glow-worm to the light
>of the sun. How
sickening and irritating is the
scepticism or the dogmatism of the half-educated
mind inflated with its modicum of late-acquired,
ill-digested knowledge Yet is it anything like as
!
disgusting as must be the self-sufficiency and vain

intellectual conceit involved in every sin ?
And then I am to contrast the Divine good
ness with my own vileness and poverty of body
and soul; dwelling on this corpus hiunilitatis "this
body of humiliation," this burden of corruptible

flesh, with
all its infirmities normal and
morbid,
designed to be a perpetual Memento of our deri
vation from the slime of the earth. Memento homo,
says the Church to us year by year, quia pulvis es
et in pulverem reverteris
"Remember, O man, that
dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return."
Yet how little do men seem to remember it when
they about with their heads in the air, as
strut
though they were not at best whited sepulchres as ;
though they did not need continual tending and

cleansing in order not to be altogether loathsome and
horrible; as though they were not at every turn liable
to be seized upon by one of those legion diseases

which lie in ambush round our path in the service
of inevitable death and decay. In making man, in
yoking the lowest grade of spiritual substance to an
animal carcase, God s wisdom seemed to have devised
a being to whom pride should be impossible and
ridiculous, in whom it should find no food to feed
on, no cleft or cranny to lurk in. Even under the
most favourable conditions, if God has endowed me
with perfect health, vigour, strength, and beauty,
how perishable and transitory it is how slight and ;
common an excellence it is above all, how entirely

;
a gift of God through natural and necessary causes !
When I think of all the beauty and grace and

wisdom displayed in physical nature which has
inspired so much joy and worship in hearts of
kindred beauty, and when I remember that all
this, together with that of countless worlds as fair
and wonderful, is but a hint at that undreamt-of
Beauty which is God, surely I must be in straits

for something to pride myselfcan find aught
on if I
in my body. Yet it cannot be denied that perfect

bodily health and beauty often breed a spirit of
independence, an insolence of pride, which leads to
sin.
If I turn from my body to my soul, there I find
still less to boast of. Doubtless as it leaves God s
hands, the soul of man, however lowly its rank in

the spiritual order, is immeasurably greater and
nobler than anything in the world of matter. Yet
as there is no animal born so feeble and unprotected
as man, so urgently in need of assistance and nurture
and education, depending as he does on the family

and on society for his proper development, in like
manner his soul s greatness is all potential and in
capacity, and depends for its development on union
and association with God. It is by nature a re
ceptacle or dwelling-place of God s light and love,
and derives all its goodness and beauty from His
indwelling. For as the body when the soul is
withdrawn becomes so much carrion and rotten
ness, so the soul when it ceases to "lean on her
beloved," to cling to Him as the vine to the elm,
becomes corrupt and abominable beyond all measure.
What brightness has the mirror apart from the sun,
and what greatness or goodness has the soul which
casts off God ? If this is true of all created spirits,
it is truest of man s soul, the least and feeblest,
albeit the dearest of all God s dear children. And
when the corruption of spiritual death once sets in,
then indeed, as St. Ignatius says, the soul becomes
no better than a centre of pestilential infection
streaming out on all sides.
We can perhaps never sufficiently realize how
sin ramifies in its harmful consequences as long as
the world lasts how it is a little spore which of its
;
own nature tends to multiply with fearful rapidity

long after the act has been forgiven by God and
forgotten by us. And this gives another point of
sharp contrast between the vileness of my own soul
and the goodness of God, whom I offend so easily.
From Him as from its source flows out all that is
good in this world, whether in Nature or the soul
of man all the light and
; glory of creation radiates
io8 SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
from this Sun, all darkness and death is only a name

for His absence while the only absolute and un
;
qualified evil which mars His work is sin, and sin

flows from the perverse will of man to increase
and multiply and replenish the earth," and to change
it from Paradise into Hell.
Vile as I am, however, soul and body, by sin I
put myself on an equality with God ;

as though
I were as good as He. I refuse to accept a position
of subjection and inferiority. It is so with every
rebel and his liege-lord he is always a leveller and

;
an upstart. We smile now superciliously at the

old Ptolemaic astronomy, which represented the sun
as whirled round the earth once a day. We show
how absurd it would be to suppose a body so vast
should sweep through a circle with a radius of
ninety million miles in twenty-four hours ;
how
much easier it is to suppose the daily revolution of
the earth on its axis ;especially when the fixed
stars, whose mass and distance we now can con
jecture less inadequately, offer each of them a similar
and greater difficulty. And yet, when we sin we are
guilty of an immeasurably greater absurdity. We
make the centre round which God and every
self
thing else is to revolve our will is to rule, and

;
God s is to be ruled. This is surely the worst part

of sin, the personal opposition of the creature to its
Creator, of will to will of our self-love to the love
;
of God the objective harm, which is the matter of

;
prohibition, is a little evil compared with this ;
though viewed another aspect this too is an

in
objective disorder beyond all other. For obedience

is itself much as any other virtue which

a virtue, as
we practise under obedience and if reason is
;
violated by a disturbance of the due relation between

men, or by faults against temperance or self-control,
so most of all when man sets his will against the
will of God.
Here St. Ignatius would have me pause and
gather up the results of my recent reflections ;
look back on long indictment I brought

that
home to myself in the review of my past life; weigh
ing well the severity of the Divine justice revealed
to me in Holy Writ ; seeing finally how all this
harmonizes with the dictates of my natural reason,
which is forced to cry out Justiis es, Domine, d
:
rectum judicium tuum "Just

art Thou, O God, and
And if God has opened
right in Thy judgments."
my eyes and touched my heart, I shall surely break
out into a cry of astonishment at God s goodness
and mercy, which has borne with me so long and so
patiently. For when He might most justly over
and over again have cut me off in the midst of my
sins, or withdrawn all His richer graces, and suffered
me to run my own perverse course from bad to
worse, He has instead pursued me, and overwhelmed
me with forgiveness and generosity He has served ;
me in all His creatures, has fed and supported me ;
He has given me all my life, movement, thought,

and will nay, the very acts and energies I turned
against Him were the gifts and evidences of His
present love. He might well have sent His angels
to destroy me, but instead, He gave them special
charge over me to keep me in all my ways. Instead

no SIN JUDGED BY REASON.
of turning a deaf ear to the prayers of His Blessed

Mother and of His saints, and forbidding them so
much as to mentionmy name, He not only harkened,
but longed to be entreated in my behalf. In a word,
when every claim to His forbearance was forfeited,
when He might have loathed me in my degradation,
He pitied me instead, and secretly drew me to a
better mind, to a desire for His service ;and when
I was
yet afar off He could bear the separation no
longer, but ran out to meet me, and silenced my
confession with a kiss of peace.
And so I betake myself once more to the foot of
His Cross, and marvel what there can be in my
miserable soul that God can so love what has ;
enslaved Him to this degree of self-abasement. And

from marvelling I pass to love and adoration, and
thence to the sorrow of a broken and contrite heart.
SIN AND SUFFERING.
"
Amen I say to thee, thou shall not go out from thence

till thou repay the last farthing." St. Matt. v. 26.
IN the preceding considerations we have spoken of

sin chiefly as of a personal offence and estrangement
from God. But how does this offence re-act upon
our own soul ? We know that God is the life of the
soul here and hereafter. The mind is made for
truth, as the eye is for colour or the ear for sound.
Knowledge is the life of the mind ;

colour is the
lifeof the eye music is the life of the ear
; ; God is
the life of the whole soul, mind and heart. As the

ear is dead till music strikes it into life so the soul, ;
till God breaks upon its vision. Without God, it is

dead.
Yet there is the negative death of inaction,
and the positive death of destruction. To hate
is more than not to love. When the soul hates
what is lovable; when it loves what is hateful,
then it is dead with the death of conscious destruc
tion. This is the which the Gospel
"
eternal death
"
opposes to eternal As
"
the exercise of any life."
faculty concerning its fitting and proper object is

attended with joy, so pain results from itsapplica
tion to a wrong object. It is like forcing a lock with
a wrong key. By sin we do not merely cease to be
H2 SIN AND SUFFERING.
God s friends, but we become His enemies; and this

with a mutual enmity. If it is the greatest of
at one with God
spiritual consolations to be
it is ;
the greatest of miseries to be driven from His face.
A stone not drawn more necessarily to the centre

is
of the earth than is the created spirit to the bosom

of God. Were the stone conscious of being held
back from its goal, still more of being driven from
it by some contrary violence, this consciousness

would mean misery. To continue the metaphor: the
nearer it approaches the centre, the more forcibly
and impetuously is it borne on. So when the soul
shakes off the fetters of matter, space, and time, and
enters its proper spiritual ether, its flight towards
God as that of a bird, no longer wearying itself
is
with futile flutterings upwards, but freed from the

snare of the fowler, and steered to its home by an
unerring, God-given if opposed
instinct. What then,
to thisfundamental attraction of our whole spiritual
being, this blind restless craving for God, there be
found an overmastering repulsion, so that we are at
once driven and drawn drawn, by the deep-down,
;
ineradicable instinct of our spiritual nature and

constitution ; driven, in virtue of the self-induced
distortion of that nature ; driven, by those same
forces and energies which we were left free either
to bring into harmony with our primary impulse or
else into conflict and discord with it. The pain of
conscious loss 1 is no mere negation, but a sharp
1
There is conscious and unconscious loss and there is the con
;
sciousness of a loss apprehended distinctly (as when one has lost his
at (as in one born blind).
sight), and that of a loss vaguely guessed
SIN AND SUFFERING. 113
agony, whose poignancy, no doubt, is proportioned

to the clearness and deliberateness of the soul s
aversion from God. The same impetus of Divine
love which hurries along to their bliss those souls
that themselves to its sway, crushes
yield to
powder those who dare to oppose it, or stand stiff
against it ;
same
which fills the eyes of the
the light
saints with glory, dazzles and darkens and withers
the eyes unanointed by grace the same fire which ;
warms and gladdens and comforts God s friends,

scorches, torments, and consumes His enemies.
God is the life of the soul, and God is the death of
the soul, "for our God is a consuming fire." 1
No
one, save those to whom it is given, can see Him
and When
the unpardoned soul passes
live. from "
out the bourne of time and space

"
into the change

less instant of eternity, where longer and shorter
have no meaning, and joy and sorrow no divisible
dimension of duration, it finds itself for ever fixed
in a state of destruction; "for ever shattered, and
the same for ever." In that first eternal pang its
punishment is complete, for it is not more shattered
because it is longer shattered. "As the tree falls
there shall it lie."
And now we turn to the other element of sin

the material element, as it used to be called. We
must view it as a disarrangement of God s plans ;
a
spoiling of His designs ;
a disturbance of the order
1
We do not mean, of course, that God
is to be identified with
the "fire which but that the thought of God s
is not quenched,"
goodness torments the soul of the wicked as much as it gladdens
the soul of the saint.
I
1 14 SIN AND SUFFERING.
of creation ;
an interference with God s created
glory. For God in His goodness has willed to
surround Himself with creation as with a halo of
glory which in no way indeed can add to His own
uncreated brightness and beauty, but of which glory
He truly the subject, even as a king receives an
is
extrinsic glory from his retinue and the pageantry

of his royal Court. Here it is that God can in a
true sense be said to be dependent upon us we ;
can further or hinder His designs; we can make

reparation for our own transgressions and the
transgressions of others.
When we examine most of God s precepts
and prohibitions we find, as far as our poor
reason carries us, that they are all directed by
His loving wisdom to the good of creation in
general and of man in particular ;

and we can often
see how sin is naturally fraught with mischievous
consequences for the individual and for society.
Yet until we can mount up to God s throne and
view things with the eyes of Him whose wisdom
"
reaches from end to end, and disposes of all things

sweetly," we can never hope
to see more than an
infinitesimal fraction of the consequences of any
single human act. For example, a man tells a lewd
story aperhaps for him.
little sin He may mention
it he may forget it. It is passed
in confession or
from mouth to mouth as time goes on, and gives
birth to a foul thought here and there; and this
springs up in the fancy unbidden a thousand times,

and draws others in its train and perchance the
;
thought fructifies in deeds and actions, themselves

fruitful of others. Who can compute the harm or

tell where it will stop, if ever ? And so of many a
lie ; many a harsh and unkind word many a slander
;
and calumny many a theft or injustice many a

; ;
negligence and omission. How terrible it would be

were God to disclose to us the sum total of that
harm in the world which shall eventually be traceable
to our faults ! I think we should be driven to despair
at once. Still more when we consider that a blemish
is more hateful according as the beauty which it mars
is greater. Could we but enter into the grandeur

and glory of God s design, we should be utterly
confounded to see how stupendous a work we had

spoilt and profaned. Of course, when we sin we do
not know all this nor do we always think very
;
explicitly of what we do know. Yet we are justly

blamed and held accountable, like little children
who are told not to meddle with the clock or with
some other piece of machinery which they don t
understand. We
know very well that sin is
forbidden for good reasons, by God, whose provi
dence is over all; and that we ourselves are not
likely toform any adequate notion of those reasons,
since they are as wide-reaching as creation. But
in our littleness we want to be as God, knowing
good and evil for ourselves and measuring it by our

own ken.
This disorder which sin produces in creation,
great as it may be, is yet a finite evil. It is
an injury done to God s garment, but not touch

ing His Person. As forbidden by Him, it cannot
be committed without an accompanying personal
n6 SIN AND SUFFERING.
offence. But the two elements must not be

confounded. If
annoy my I friend
by upset
ting his house and furniture, I cannot undo his
annoyance. That is for him to do in his free

forgiveness. But if after I am forgiven I neglect to
re-arrange his affairs so far as I can, I tacitly
reiterate my offence. Similarly, after God has
forgiven us, if we neglect to set right, as far as we
can, what we have set wrong if we fail to restore ;
the order which we have destroyed, or to make any

compensation that is in our power, we thereby
relapse into our former offence. And by harm done
we must not understand the mere social effects of
sin, but the disturbance of that moral order which
requires the subjection of our own passions to the
rational will, and of the rational will to God. For
this too is a finite disorder, to be compensated by a
corresponding repression of the same rebellious
faculties ;
in a word, by their punishment for we
all feel at once that indulgence is balanced by
restriction, and over-feeding by a fast.

And this is what we mean by the temporal punish
ment due to sin. We say
"
temporal," because it is
finite, and we express finitude in terms of time. For

those who die in deadly sin, the temporal punishment
is said to become eternal. Not that it lasts time
without end, nor yet does it cease after a time for
time is no more but because, as Aquinas points
;
out, the state of the departed is unchangeable,

unprogressive. They are stayed, and, as it were,
petrified in their first conscious instant of other-
world existence. And over and above the pain of
SIN AND SUFFERING. -117
personal antagonism and opposition to God their

lost treasure there recoils upon them all the evil
that they have caused in God s creation, in them
selves and in others, so that the balance of the
moral order is restored, and truth and right are
triumphant Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit
humiles The lofty are brought low, and the lowly
uplifted. Yet compared with the anguish of
antagonism to God, which is the very death of the
soul, this penalty for the disorder of sin is finite.
As to the precise nature of that timeless torment it
is vain for us to speculate. In a modified sense we
Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
"
may say of it :
nor heart conceived." For although it is not a

supernatural mystery like the Beatific Vision, yet it
belongs to that spirit world outside time and space,
whereof we have at best remotely analogical con
ceptions. Our Saviour speaks of a unquench "fire
and Holy Church forbids us to confine

"
able;
the torments simply to remorse, or to deny that it
will penetrate to every corner of our conscious
being, so that the senses shall expiate their unlawful
indulgence by a consciousness of sense suffering.
The more we learn to look upon the whole
physical and visible world as the self-expression
and symbol of that world which is spiritual and
invisible, and to regard this frail body of our
humiliation as not merely the earthly tenement
of our immortal part, but as in some sense its
creation and its sacrament even as the whole
world is God s creation and sacrament the easier
does it become to conceive that the element whose
Il8 SIN AND SUFFERING.
infusion transforms and spiritualizes the risen

bodies
of the saints, releasing them from the fetters of
time and space, is no other than the sanctified soul
transfused with the fulness of the Divine indwelling;
and that as the natural soul fashions to itself a
fitting garment of and blood, and commu
flesh
nicates its own nature and idea for the time being
to the matter which it stealthily draws from its
environment, so the same soul transfigured and
that which it
glorified, glorifies and transfigures
assumes and subdues to itself. If this be so, it is
not incongruous to believe that when eternal death

is perfected in the soul, its sting should
send its
into everyfibre of our double nature. But
poison
in all this are simply groping after some less
we
to a world
inadequate statement of truths belonging
wholly unimaginable, and
are safe only in holding
to the words of the Gospel and of the Church, to
those divinely authorized expressions of a mystery
which is above and beyond our adequate appre
into
hension, which can never be exactly translated
It belongeth to the
"
the language of the senses.

Mother Julian of
royal lordship of God," says
have His privy counsels in peace,
Norwich, "to
and belongeth to His servants for obedience

it
and
reverence not to will to know His counsels. Our
Lord hath and compassion on us for that some
pity
creatures make themselves so busy therein and ;
I am sure if we wist how greatly we should please

Him and ease ourselves to leave it, we would. The
saints inHeaven they will nothing wit but what
our Lord will show them."
There is yet another consequence of sin, that is,

of repeated sin, which we must take notice of;
namely, vice. Vice is a propension or inclination

towards sinful actions ; begotten chiefly by our own
sins, though perhaps to some extent inherited from
our sinful ancestors. There are also propensions to
sin which no way owe their origin to personal
in
fault, but are merely constitutional. Now, as

virtue is an adornment of the soul for we all
feel that a good disposition is a spiritual charm
distinct from that of good conduct, and that
good conduct is better if it proceeds from good
inclination and does not need to be forced so
vice is undoubtedly a blemish which unfits the
soul for the presence of God not, indeed, a blemish
;
comparable to the stain of actual sin, but still

a deformity and disfigurement in point of dis
position. It was the error of Pelagianism to rate
men by their disposition rather than by their actual
conduct, to fix their eternal destiny by the considera
tion ofwhat they would have done in hypothetical
circumstances, and not by what they did in their
actual circumstances. It is by our works that we
have to be judged, by our deliberate thoughts, and

resolves, and words, and actions; not by our habits,
inclinations, and dispositions. These latter are indeed
important, but wholly for the sake of the actions
to which they give birth. But so far as morality
stands for virtues, good habits, and inclinations, it
may be said that our whole moral evolution consists
in the gradual elimination of all evil inclinations, and
in the cultivation of contrary dispositions. Sin not
120 SIN AND SUFFERING.
only retards but undoes our progress in this respect.

However rich the repentant soul may be in grace,
yet until it is purged of all vicious tendencies it is
not fit for God s

presence. For flesh and blood
shall not inherit that Kingdom ;
nor corruption
incorruption. Our mortality and frailty must put
on strength and immortality. And as all birth and
growth and refinement is, for us earth-bound
limited creatures, at the cost of much suffering and
tribulation per multas tribulationes so the purifica
tion of our soul from vice and infirmity is a bitter
and laborious task.
has been disputed 1 whether the purgatorial
It
fire is merely expiatory of the pains due to forgiven
sins, or is also perfective of the heart and mind of

the sufferer. But in truth the difference of view is
more apparent than real. It is certain that nothing
1
sc., Between Bellarmine and Suarez. The former thinks that
even the guilt of venial sin is remitted in Purgatory the latter :
holds that such guilt, together with all vicious tendencies, is burnt
out of the soul at the Particular Judgment by an act of sovereign
love, leaving nothing but temporal debts for the purgatorial
fire. Plainly it is largely a matter of words. Both agree that
these three things venial guilt, vicious inclination, and temporal
debt need to be purged away, the two former by some intense act
of love (whose natural language is suffering or contrition), the third
by pain. Bellarmine views the three processes as simultaneous,
and calls it all Purgatory Suarez regards the third a? subsequent
;
to the two first, and reserves to it the name of Purgatory. We know

too little about duration in the spirit world to make the controversy
very profitable. St. Catherine of Genoa seems to take a
middle
to the second and
position and to apply the term "Purgatory"
third processes. Needless to say, this discourse of ours is founded
on her In us qua de Purgatorio determinata non
classical treatise :
sunt ab Ecdesia, standum est Us qua stint magis conformia dictis et rcvela-
tionibus sanctorum. (Aquinas, in 4. Sent. d. 21. q. i. a. i.)
defiled can enter Heaven, and that this refers not

only to the defilement of sin or to the debt of
temporal pain, but also to those vicious habits and
tendencies of the soul which remain after the fullest
absolution and indulgence, and are called the
yeliquicz peccati. These
spiritual diseases and indis
positions must be cured before the soul can see
God and they are cured as soon as the medicine
;
of grace, already received, works its full effect ; that

is, when by
strong, painful acts of love the soul has
corresponded to and utilized the secret forces
conveyed to it through the sacraments, and has thus
been perfected through suffering. Now, when we
say that temporal pain is due to forgiven sin-
that justice requires it, it is not to be thought that
pain as such can satisfy justice but rather pain as ;
atoning for that lack of reverence and love involved

in sin pain, as an expression and embodiment of
;
love and reverence. It is because there is no love
or reverence in the lost, because all they suffer is

against their will, that their pains cannot in the
strict sense satisfy justice,
even as in this world the
wicked who rebel against God s lash rather increase
than remedy their guilt.
only love that can expiate the unjust with
It is
holding of love and therefore the temporal punish

;
ment due to forgiven sin is really in the long run

medicinal, or at all events nutritive in respect to
the soul of the sufferer, whether on earth or in
Purgatory.
As it is but a superficial and utilitarian view of
Christianity which regards it principally as a system
122 SIN AND SUFFERING.
of morality whose end is social and political peace

and prosperity, and which therefore looks on the
life to come as a mere sanction subordinated to the
securing of those temporal effects; (whereas, in truth,

Christianity wholly subordinates this life to the
next, making it little better than a pre-natal
existence, a time of secret moulding and fashioning)
so it is a mistake to regard Purgatory as a sort of
accidental stage, a mere finishing process by which
the last touches are put upon a work which has
been substantially completed on earth. Truly in
some sense it is in this life that the foundation of
our salvation is laid, that its lines and dimensions
are determined and fixed, that our free-will accepts,
or rejects, or modifies the plans and ideals of the
Divine mind in our regard. But if the seed is sown
here, it is only in the glow of suffering that it
germinates and sends up its stalk and if in some ;
few exceptional cases that work of development is

to a great extent completed in the furnace of
earthly tribulation, yet for the most, and as a
general law, Purgatory that the causes here

it is in
freely set in motion, find due conditions in which to

work out their necessary effects in the soul. Doubt
less the love cf the martyrs, which, like that of their
Master, finds expression in absolute self-sacrifice

and in the bearing of unspeakable torments, perfects
the labour of many years in a little space but ;
though such extreme suffering is not for all men the

price of grace and salvation, yet it does not seem
likely that grace can yield its full fruit or that the
soul, already saved, can be fitted for the King s
embrace short of an equal purification by pain.

The martyrs and confessors are those who to some
extent received here that purgatory which we all
must receive sooner or later. But the many are too
weak to purchase grace at such a cost, and God
condescends to their frailty by veiling from them
the full burden they have taken upon themselves
till such times as they shall be able to bear it
willingly.
We are now in a better position to appreciate
the sufferings of the blessed souls in Purgatory.
When the pardoned soul passes out of this life it is
ushered into the presence of our Saviour,

And with the intemperate energy of love
Flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel :
But ere reach them, the keen sanctity

it
Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes

And circles round the Crucified, has seized
And scorched and shrivelled it and now it lies
;
Passive, and still, before the awful throne.

O happy, suffering soul ! for it is safe ;
Consumed, yet quickened by the glance of God. 1
For it is thrust through with the sharp and fiery

sword of contrite love. Who has not at times been
filled with self-hatred, with a passion for self-
inflicted suffering, on the sudden conviction of

baseness and ingratitude towards some noble and
loving soul What then must be the anguish, the
!
thirst for self- vengeance, when the whole lovableness

of God and the whole extent and depth of its own
sinfulness is first flashed upon the soul a pain that
is saved from being remorse, and yet is increased
Newman s Dream of Gerontius.
1
124 SIN AN D SUFFERING.
by the knowledge that in spite of all God loves it
still, loves it infinitely. And proportioned to the

awful force which
with the disembodied and
pardoned soul drawn towards the bosom of God,
is
is the strain and agony of that violent separation
which must last till it is perfected and purified.

This then is the first and chiefest pain of
Purgatory, the pain of bitter, though love-born
sorrow for past unlovingness the agony of violent ;
present separation from an embrace just missed. I
do not know if in the nature of things this suffering

can be alleviated by our prayers or that the Holy ;
Souls would willingly be spared a pang of that sweet

saving sorrow whereby every vice is burnt out by
the roots and every virtue burnt in. 1 We do not
know if this process be measurable in terms of time,
or if it be, as Suarez seems to have thought, the
work of an instant. It is, indeed, a fiery trial,
whereby the gold is freed from its dross in the

scorching flame of Divine love, and as long as
there is dross and impurity there will be sharp
agonizing suffering.
But the same light which discloses to us our sin
as a treason against our Eternal Lover, also shows
itto us as to its intrinsic malice. There for the first
time we are set face to face with God s fair plan of
creation and we see what
; it is we have helped to
spoil, and to what extent. We trace the ramifica

tions of our guilty acts like ugly black lines spreading
1
Not that this involves any increase of sanctifying grace ; but
only that the grace and love already there should work its effect and
spread itself to every corner of the spiritual frame.
out on sides, and stretching forward to the last

all
syllable of recorded time. And if now our memory

leaves us conscious of only a big blot here and there,
then the whole story will stand out clear as to its
minutest detail ; and half-smothered motives that
we refused to admit to ourselves will be dragged
forth into clear light and we shall see ourselves
;
contrasted not only with what our inmost conscience

told us, but with what it might have told us if we
had used our opportunities of knowing better. And
our rectified will, in full sympathy with God s, will
be shocked and horrified at the hideous moral ruin
we have worked and it will be ardent and restless
;
in its desire to compensate and atone

by its own
suffering and submission, for the disorder caused by
its past indulgence and rebellion. But how measure
less and all but infinite a task will this

appear And !
will not be the earnest desire of such a soul that

it
all should by love and patient suffering make repara

tion to God in every possible way for this great
dishonour He has received and especially that for
;
the harm whereof it has itself been the author, it

may, by its own sufferings, or by those of others
near and dear to it, make due restitution. If I see
my friend s house on fire, I will get all I have any

claim on, to help me to put it out still more, if it
is on fire through my carelessness ; or through some
past fault that I for. am now sorry
In this it is
that the souls in Purgatory so earnestly desire our
help, that we may hasten the day when God s
honour shall be satisfied ; and when they will no
longer feel the intolerable pain of responsibility for
I2 6 SIN AND SUFFERING.
a disorder not remedied, for a debt still unpaid ;
and when they will at last be able to enter into the

not only from the
joy of God s presence purified,
relics of sin, from evil or imperfect inclinations, but
also from that debt of personal penalty whereof they
shall then have paid the last farthing.
Against the practice of assisting the souls

in
Purgatory our laziness suggests, with some ingenuity,

that after all they are happy and blessed Beati :
wortui" Happy are the dead." They are safe in
port ;
out of all risk and danger. Would God we
were as well Let us therefore pray and work
off!
for those who are still storm-tossed and uncertain of

salvation. What comparison can there be between
the two needs ?
all, this objection is

First of not usually urged by
those who
are very earnest in their intercession for
the living or who have, in consequence, no moment
;
of time left for the needs of the dead. On the

contrary, the charity which urges to the one
form of
intercession, usually urges to the other. Then, it is
true that the souls in Purgatory are happy sub
stantially, fundamentally. But, as these words
suggest, our happiness lies in layers
and is divisible.
Fundamental happiness is compatible with super
ficialor less fundamental misery. The saints on
earth had this fundamental happiness of being right
with but they also had great sufferings and
God ;
tribulations of soul and body to endure. And these

sufferings real and very worthy of pity.
were very ;
in the
I know there is a spirituality which despises
case of others any trouble that is not spiritual;
which is so impressed with the advantages of trials

and pains for other people, that it can see nothing
in them to pity. If a man has the grace of God, he
"
has a treasure of infinite worth. Why should we

pity him because he has got all the sorrows of Job
on his head; because he has lost his home, and
children, and influence, and health ? These are but
temporal sorrows; these but the thorns of a
heavenly crown. Why pluck them out?" This is not
God s way, who made body and soul, and redeemed
both alike ; who desires not our fundamental happi
ness alone, but our entire happiness; who afflicts
always with regret, and only "for greater gain of
after-bliss who feels the least of our pains far
;
"
more than we feel it ourselves, being afflicted in

"
all our afflictions who pities the pitiful, and

;
"
blesses the man who has consideration for the

poor
and needy, and smoothes his pillow for him in his
sickness ; who calls a
he pretends to man a liar if
bewail invisible and supernatural evils, and
yet has
no pityfor those that are visible and natural. 1 The
same reasons which forbid us to neglect the temporal
and bodily needs of the living under pain of reproba
tion, forbid us to neglect the sufferings of the blessed
dead. Nay, because they are blessed and dearer to
God, we owe them a special care and service.
St. Paul tells us that our
charity, which is due to all,
is first due to those that are of the household of the
faith. And are not the blessed dead more truly in

God s household than the living ? If God wants us
to visit Him in the prisons of
earthly justice, much
1
i St. John iv.
i 28 SIN AND SUFFERING.
more does He wait for our consolation in the

debtor prison of heavenly justice.
s
"
Remember
the poor debtors," for they cry out
to us day and
night with their endless Miser emini mei ! Let us

make friends with them now, that when our time
comes they may help us, and at last welcome us into
everlasting habitations. For they will not be like

Pharao s butler, who, when released from prison,
no longer remembered Joseph his helper, but forgot
him.
This, indeed, is the least of all motives, though
a good one. Still better, is the thought that alms
giving, if it be the child of real charity

and pitying
love of others, cleanses our soul from all sin and
wins us a heritage of mercy. Also, whatever unselfs
us, and takes us out of our narrowness, and makes
us live for others and in others, and dwell, not upon
our own wounds, but on those of Christ s Mystic
Body, an incalculable good.
is
Again, charity to the dead is in some way more

beneficial to our faith than charity to the living.
For faith means a realization of the invisible world ;
and one reason why this devotion flags is because

we are more alive to pains we can see and imagine,
than to those of the mysterious spirit-world. Humani
tarian charity, important as it is, involves no great
exercise of faith in the invisible.
But beyond all these reasons and motives there
is one which appeals to our love of God, and of
His Blessed Mother, and of the saints, His friends
and courtiers. We have often heard of miners
being buried alive in the bowels of the earth,
while their parents and friends were

standing above
their living grave, broken-hearted and terrified,
listening anxiously for some sound or sign from
the depths, to sustain and quicken their
languish
ing hopes. So may we figure to ourselves, God
and His Blessed Mother and the saints,
standing
on high above the abyss of Purgatory, where the
Holy Souls are buried under a vast depth of incum-
brances and debts of punishment to be worked out,
through which their faint cries for assistance scarce
penetrate From the depths have I cried to Thee,
:
"
O Lord. Let Thy ears be attentive to the voice of

my supplication."
God is in some sense powerless, and dependent
on our co-operation for the deliverance of His dear
children, whom He afflicts
but of not willingly
necessity; His wisdom and justice tie His hands,
and bid Him wait for the payment of the last
farthing. And Mary longs to welcome them home
to her Mother s heart, with all their
sufferings and
sorrows past, their tears wiped away, and their
cup
of joy filled to the brim even as she is said to have
waited with restless longing by the tomb
through
the vigil of Easter to clasp to her breast the first-
fruits of the dead, the first-born of her many children.
And the saints are also athirst for the deliverance
of the blessed dead for every new-comer to their
;
festival increases the

joy of all the rest a joy that
grows and feeds on sympathy, a fire that burns
more fierce and bright for every new faggot that is
cast upon it.
And so, as usual, the instinct of the Catholic

J
I3 o
SIN AND SUFFERING.
religion is found to be true and right and faithful as

soon as we look it carefully and devoutly.
into Our
faith is everywhere seen to be an exquisite harmony,
so delicate, so exact in composition, that no element
can be removed or disturbed without destruction to
the whole. The devotion to the Holy Souls might,
to a superficial thinker, seem an arbitrary accretion
to the body of Catholic teaching, something stuck
on from without, that could be removed without
hurt. But closer examination proves it a true vital
outgrowth whose veins and fibres reach down
through the whole plant to the very earth itself,
whence it draws its life. You cannot touch it or
tear without injury to every other article of belief,
it
to the doctrine of sin and its consequences which

again involves the doctrine of God as
Creator and
Redeemer to the doctrines of vicarious suffering, of
the communion of saints, of charity, of mercy, and
of all the doctrines which they depend upon and
involve.
THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
Aut pati, aut mori "
Let me either suffer or die."
WE are told in the Breviary lesson for the feast of

St. Teresa 1 that, not content with the passive,
patient, and loving endurance of the many crosses
and afflictions whereby in the ordinary course of
His providence God purified and chastened her
affections, and prepared her soul for an eternal
union with Himself, for the everlasting embrace of
the Heavenly Spouse, she was wont, in obedience
to the inspiration of Divine love, to
go out of her
way in search of further sufferings, to regard them
as pearls of great price to be
earnestly sought for,
and carefully hoarded when found that she was ;
restless,uneasy, ever she were wholly free

fretful, if
from pain or sorrow or humiliation, from the Cross
in one form or another. For her, life without suffer
ing was not worth living ; it was death, worse than

death: Aut pati, aut mori "Let me either suffer
or die."
Her earliest manifestation of this strange passion

was when as a mere child she fled from home, hand
in hand with her little
brother, to seekjnartyrdom
among the Moors. That indeed was the greedy
1
This is the development of a sermon preached on her feast in
1896 in the Carmelite Church, Kensington, London.
i 32 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
improvidence of childhood, which would have sacri

ficed the unknown treasures of suffering, hidden in
the womb of futurity, for one short, sharp ecstasy
of present pain which would have driven the pierc
;
ing sword home at a blo\v, rather than inch by

inch, with protracted lingerings and loving delays.
But God saved her from herself and from her
folly, as He always does those who love Him ;
thwarting her present good desire that He might

fulfil it a hundred-fold in due season. He had in
reserve for her a baptism, not of blood, but of sorrow,
a far deeper chalice of suffering than that which her
infant greed had thirsted for, a glorious chalice full
to the brim, overflowing, inebriating with heavenly
joy and ecstasy. Ant pati, ant mori : she

was not to
die, but to suffer. Non moriar sed vivam
"
You
shall not die, Teresa, butyou shall live and suffer
and declare the wonderful works of God."
A
strange answer, indeed, to the problem of life s
value, in these days when it is so generally assumed
as a first and self-evident principle that suffering is
the one unmitigated evil, and that to escape it
ourselves, or to lessen it for others, the only

is
reasonable and worthy end we can put before us.

Here both egoist and altruist, he who lives for
himself and he who lives for others, are at one in their

estimate of good and evil. The former, indeed, by
cutting the cords which would bind him by affection
to his fellow-men and make him a sharer of their
sufferings, narrows the area in

which Sorrow can
lodge the arrows she directs against him the
latter ;
going out of himself by sympathy, makes, together

THE GOSPEL OF PAIN. 133
with the many with whom he

is bound up, an easy
mark most casual dart. Yet what they fly

for her
from, and what they fight against in both cases, is

one and the same thing pain, suffering, sorrow.
None, however, are so short-sighted as not to see
that, however undesirable pain may be in itself, it is,
nevertheless, in the established order of things very
often a necessary condition of life and enjoyment;
that it must be faced firmly and frequently by those
who wish to extract the full value from a finite and
limited existence ;
so that their very horror of pain
should lead them to bear it, nay, even to seek it, in
their own interest or in that of others for whose happi

ness they live. They recognize that all creation is
groaning and travailing, expecting its deliverance ;
that pain is the inevitable condition of growth and

expansion ;
that life feeds upon death that the
;
present must die in giving birth to the future. Aut

pati, autmori; no life but at the cost of suffering,
seems the universal law of evolution. To survive is
to struggle ;
to struggle is to suffer, and to cause
suffering. And this law they extend from the

physical into the moral and social world, and they
tell us that those who, shrinking from its
seeming
cruelty, would by some vain Utopian scheme end
this struggle between man and man, with its
attendant suffering, would in reality be courting
social death and decay, would be multiplying for
posterity those very evils they seek to avoid for

themselves.
Thus those who hold most firmly that a pleasure-
able life, free from pain, sorrow, and affliction, is
I 34 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
the one thing to aim at, are willing to allow that
only through many tribulations can we enter into

such a kingdom of enjoyment. Aut pati, aut mori ;
those who flee the Cross cannot grasp even the
perishable crown of pleasure.
The most and shameless of pleasure-
selfish
seekers, if he be not led blindly by his feelings from

moment to moment, if he exercise any foresight or
human prudence in the conduct of life, sees clearly
that he must suffer for pleasure s sake that he ;
must deny himself and practise judicious self-

restraint that he must be a miser in economizing
;
the enjoyments of life in the present, for the sake

of greater eventual gain of enjoyment. Reflection
and experience alike tell him that the pleasures
of life stand out more brightly against a dark
background of pain. The most acute pleasure,

if continuously sustained at the same pitch, soon
ceases to affect our consciousness in any way;
i.e., ceases to be pleasure for pleasure springs from
;
the consciousness of an agreeable state, and con

sciousness is like a drugged sleeper kept awake only
by incessant rousings and changes of position.
Without so far as those who say (with
going
Schopenhauer), that pleasure is only the conscious
ness of a cessation or mitigation of pain, every
pleasure-seeker must allow that pain is the very
tonic of the sensitive faculty, whereby the dulled
appetite for pleasure is sharpened anew. Without
suffering, life, even for such a one, were not
worth living, but would quickly exhaust itself
and become flat, stale, and unprofitable. Aut pati,
aut mori ; if pleasure be life, one must either suffer
or die.
If turn to the philanthropist, i.e., to him
we
who, in obedience to a God-given instinct for which
most modern philosophy vainly seeks any coherent
justification, strives to communicate to others what
he himself esteems the truest happiness we find
the same inevitable condition accepted. Positivism,
which includes in its scheme of benevolence all
sentient creation from man down to the meanest
insect, decks out in the blood-stained garment
itself
of Christian asceticism. It breathes everywhere the
spirit of self-sacrifice, it speaks

the language of
charity, it vaunts the Cross upon its brow. Nay, it

has rediscovered Christ it has raised from the dead
;
Him whom the Churches have slain. Aut pati, aut

mori, it
says the greatest amount of enjoyment
;
for the many can only be secured by the self-sacri

fice of the few who devote their lives to a crusade
against pain, the arch-enemy, who suffer more, that

others may suffer less, and yet by sympathy with
the joy of others, find their own unselfish sorrow
turned into joy. In all this there is something so
analogous to Christian fraternal charity, that the
very elect themselves are often deceived. For here
too so far as there is any definite positivist
morality or law love to our neighbour is the
fulfilling of that law.

Christian and positivist alike live and suffer for
the common happiness. It is, however, in their
estimate, not only of what true happiness consists

in, but of the relation between pain and happiness,
136 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
that they are as antagonistic one to another, as light

to darkness. Too often, indeed, the kind-hearted,
good-natured philanthropist makes little profession
of any definite theory of life and happiness, but
busies himself incessantly going about and doing
"
"
good as his momentary instinct or feeling prompts

him. He
does not delay to go minutely into the
remote or possible consequences of his benevolent
activity, or to search keenly into his motives, but
wherever he is pained by the sufferings of others
in any form, he at once seeks to relieve his own

pain by relieving theirs. And by yielding to this
kindly impulse and indulging it, it becomes more
and more tyrannical in its demand for gratifi
cation, so that eventually he is simply dominated
altogether and indiscriminately by his abhorrence
of every form of suffering. Were suffering really
the ultimate evil, and were enjoyment the ulti
mate good, such a tyranny of benevolence would
be simply the fulness and perfection of Divine
charity.
Yet let such a one be reduced by poverty, sick
ness, or other causes to long years of helpless
suffering in which he can no longer minister to the
happiness of others, and let him be set face to face

with the problem as to what that happiness is which
he sought for them and which they should now
minister to him, and he will be forced to see that
he has hitherto been as a physician going about
dispensing drugs and remedies of which he knows
nothing, for the cure of diseases of which he knows
as little that he was healing others while he knew
;
not how to heal he was a blind

himself; that
leader of the blind plucking motes from his neigh
;
bour s eye, all unconscious of the beam in his own.

An indiscriminate pain-shirker himself, he dealt with
others as he himself would have wished to be dealt
with.
bearing the burdens of others he far
Nay, in
surpassed any Christian saint. For the Christian

may never, for the love of others, himself forego
one particle of that final happiness which he desires
to secure for them, nor incur the slightest taint of
that ultimate evil from which it is his supreme
endeavour to preserve them. He may never sin,
even a little, that others may sin less, or stand for
an instant in his own light that others may enjoy
a fuller view of God s face. Whereas the philan
thropist, viewing pain as the last and unqualified
evil, will endure it himself that others
may escape
it thus sacrificing what he deems his own highest
;
good as a means to the highest good of others.

is sometimes objected to Christians
This self-care
as indicating a lower altruism, a less absolute un
selfishness than obtains, at all events in theory,
among the disciples of Comte. Yet unjustly. For

though the Christian must love himself before his
neighbour, and though
"
charity begins at home,"

yet his self-care and self-love is subordinated as a
means to the care and love of others for God s sake,

that he may have wherewith to give to him that is
"
in need." It is only in the measure that he has

found and tasted happiness himself that he will feel
the desire to impart it to others.
I3 8 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
Flammescat igne caritas,

Accendat ardor proximos, 1
is the Catholic principle. If, then, a man must love
neighbour s, it is a
"
his own soul before his before-

ness" of time rather than of affection. The Christian
conception of humanity as an organism, as a many-

branched tree rooted in God and drawing life from
Him, demands that each part be animated and
moved towards the general good of the whole
organism as its all-dominating aim and yet it
is in
;
and itself that it contributes

perfecting strengthening
most effectively towards this universal and unselfish
end. It never could possibly be for the happiness,
that is, for the true well-being, of others that
a man should neglect his own highest life ;
but
rather, the stronger, the higher he is, the more
effectively can he raise and strengthen
others.
The mother must feed herself for the sake of the
child at her breast. It is, therefore, the motive from
which it springs, the end to which it is directed,
that turns what would otherwise be spiritual selfish

ness into that truest altruism which regards God
and self and neighbour as one thing vine and
branches with one life, one movement, one interest.
Most of the kindness of modern humanitarians,
however well meant, is really as spurious as that of
the father who weakly yields to every wish and
whim of his children, who will never inflict the least
pain upon them that can by any possibility be
avoided, who takes it for granted that suffering is
1
Kindle the flame of good desire
around be set on fire.
Till all
never a good, is never to be endured save by way

of economy as a condition of less eventual suffer
ing. Yet even this end should make the develop
ment of the pain-bearing faculty a far more important
feature of education than it is at the present day.
The whole aim of humanitarians is to lessen the

amount of pain in the world, but in no wise to
teach men to bear pain, much less to value it, to
court it, to be in love with it, as St. Teresa was.
They seek to raise the standard, not of happiness

(which, indeed, they lower), but of comfort; thus
implicitly making comfort, or freedom from hard
ships and bodily sufferings, if not the essence, at
least an essential condition of happiness. They
strive to make men less accustomed to privations
and inconvenience, and therefore more impatient
and intolerant of such as are inevitable, to make the
conditions of contentment ever more manifold and
complex, and therefore more rarely realized, more
easily disturbed.
Nay, the very sympathy extended to suffering,
the tone, so to say, in which it is pitied, makes it
much harder to endure. How often do we not bear
up against trouble until we ourselves pitied;
find
how often is it not pity which first suggests to us
the misery of our plight ? Suffering would be
bearable enough were it not for reflection, which
magnifies it and joins its several pangs into one
chain of woe, and brings those that are past and
even those that are future to bear upon the present,
and crushes us with pain of which nine-tenths
belong to the world of ideas. But this phantom
I 4o THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
grows to a Brocken-spectre when we see it reflected

in the eyes of allaround us. Our estimate of good
and evil is largely taken from those with whom we
dwell, and our enjoyment and suffering depend on
that estimate. Thus we marvel at what our fore
fathers put up with in the way of discomfort we ;
admire their patient endurance of various incon

veniences, injustices, oppressions, which to us would
be quite unbearable and forgetting that the con
;
ditions of contentment are far more subjective than

objective, we fancy that our ancestors must have
been as miserable as \ve should now be in the same
circumstances. Instead of inuring men to the
rough climate of this mortal life, humanitarianism
has accustomed them to wraps and muffles, and

rendered them susceptible to every little change of
temperature poor, frail, pain-fearing creatures.
Indeed, there are no greater enemies of human
happiness than those who substitute pleasure and
pain for good and evil. Pleasure is coy and will
not be sought directly. She is found by those who
seek her not, and flies, as does their shadow, from
those who hotly pursue her. And pain is terrible
chiefly to those who have learnt to view it as the
ultimate So that in pursuing the one phantom
evil.
and flying from the other, they are not only diverted
from the quest of true and solid happiness, but
inevitably fail to secure even that which they
seek.
As far as this modern philanthropy understands
"
"
itself, it is simply positivist ;

it is indifferent to
belief in God or in the life to come. It finds its
motive largely in a sense of pity springing from the

very decay of faith, pity for human life so short, so full
of misery, so void of hope, and thence it conceives
a desire to sweeten the bitterness of that lot, to
crowd all life s brief span,
possible enjoyment into
to exclude avoidable suffering and sorrow, and in
all
every other way to minister anodynes and narcotics

which will mitigate the sadness of existence, and
foster the illusion that life, without God, without
immortality, is still a prize worth having. And this
same pity for temporal pain and suffering, as the
evil of evils, is naturally extended to the whole of
sentient creation, to all our fellow-mortals, from

whom we are thought to be divided by no very
certain line whence the extravagances of zoophilist
;
fanaticism, and the growing tenderness for animal

suffering which, though beautiful in itself when
resting on a rational foundation, is altogether
reprehensible when raised to the rank of a supreme
rule of action to the prejudice of higher principles.
The Buddhist has at least an apparent religious
justification for his attitude in the matter, but the
modern positivist (unlike the Catholic Christian)
can offer no basis for his zoophilism save the
tyranny of a sentiment, good in itself, but pampered

into a mania by indiscriminate indulgence, and which
by its very extravagances hurts the cause he would
help. For there is no affection, passion, or instinct,
however natural, or useful, or admirable in due
season and measure, that may be always and every
where indulged without reference and subjection to
the higher rule of reason whose minister it is.
not surprising that those who estimate the

It is
evil of the world in terms of pain and sorrow

should descant in no measured language on the
cruelty of Nature, and should refuse to believe
that behind all there is a personal God who
could prevent all this misery and yet will not.
If He could not, say they, how is He almighty?
If He will not, how is He all-loving? In either
case how is He infinite ;
how is He God ? Nor
would the
objection weight, were be without
temporal enjoyment the final good of man were ;
there no higher good with which the lower has no

common measure, being, so to say, in a different
plane or category.
"
If in this life only we have

hope," says St. Paul,
"
then are we of all men the

most miserable a pessimism no less applicable to
"
life viewed merely in the light of reason if the ;
present enjoyment of sentient creation be indeed

the ultimate good, then it is hard to see the
finger of the All-Mighty, the All-Loving God in such
a result as is evident to our limited view. And
therefore we find many pure, unselfish souls,
bewildered with this
disheartening philosophy,
devoting all their energies to a fruitless contest
with the inexorable laws of this seemingly cruel
world, if perchance they may even by a single drop
lessen the vast ocean of misery and pain, seeking no
other happiness than that of procuring the happiness
of others, though scarce knowing what happiness
means. Their instinct of benevolence, ill-instructed
though it be, is from God, the Author of all charity
and unselfish love. In living for the good of others
they are at one with the Christian, but in their

estimate of what that good consists in, they are
diametrically opposed to a religion which regards
pain or sorrow, not merely as an inevitable and
regrettable condition of good, to be minimized as
far as possible, but as a positive means to good,
something to be sought out and willingly embraced

in due season and measure not merely as a ;
bitterness incidental to the medicine of life, but as

itself a medicinal bitterness; a religion which says:
Blessed are the poor, blessed are the mourners,
blessed are the persecuted, blessed are the dead ;
which commends to us the example, not of one

who was merely a martyr to inevitable violence,
but of one who could have descended from the
Cross, yet would not.
Still, with all its short-sighted horror of suffering,
modern philanthropy is well aware that it is only
through much suffering that its aspirations can be

realized, that it is only at the cost of endless labour
and self-sacrifice that the sum of human misery can
be in any way lessened, or the sum of enjoyment
increased, that if such social and collective felicity
be life, then the law holds good Aut pati, aid mori :
"
Either suffer or perish." Still more evident is it
that if one s individual happiness is found only in

self-forgetful devotion to the vaguely conceived
welfare of others, such devotion involves continual
suffering, and that the life of altruism is a life of
pain. Aut pati, aut mori ; if selfishness be death, if
unselfishness be life, we must either suffer or die.

If now we turn from these who lay such
exaggerated stress on material comfort, and on free

dom from bodily pain and from pain of the merely
sensitive affections and instincts, who reduce all
moral duties to the one universal duty of an unselfish
regard for the almost animal happiness of others ;
and if we turn to those who in all ages, guided

by the mere light of reason, have taken a higher
and nobler view of man s nature and capacities for
happiness, who find the value of life, in whatsoever
things are true, whatsoever things are pure, what
soever things are just, whatsoever things are holy,
whatsoever things are lovable, who scorn to make
pleasure an object of direct pursuit, whose single
aim is objective truth and right, whether it bring
pleasure or pain in its wake, who define good as
that which ought to be and which they desire should
be; not as that which they would like to feel;
who (at least confusedly) recognize the interests of
reason and conscience as the universal interests of
God, which they but minister as servants and
to
instruments in His hands; if we turn to these
and question them, we receive again the same
merciless sentence: Aut pati, ant mori "Either
suffer or die."
They know well that restraint and suffering is
essential to the formation, the growth, the main

tenance of every virtue suffering in the mind, in
the will, in the heart, in the affections, in the
senses.
For does not the mind rebel against the yoke
not only of faith but of reason ? Does it not play
into the hands of the imagination and of the senti-
ments, and betray us at all points ? And is not

the natural will a rebel to all obedience and law ?
And are not the affections prone to selfishness and

narrowness, and hostile to the wide spirit of charity
and brotherly love ? And are not the senses and
passions stubborn against the control of temperance
and fortitude, and of all the other virtues included
under these ? Are they not all so many infidels
who have gained God
holy land, that
possession of s
is, of the sacred territory of the human soul

infidels, in their blindness to the principles of faith
and reason, in their spirit of boundless self-
assertion at the expense of God s glory and man s
happiness, infidels who are to be, not slain, but
chastised and subdued and pressed into servitude
in the interests of Divine Wisdom, their conqueror ?
Can all this disorder be checked, all these wild
forces be kept in hand, can the sweet yoke and
light burden of Heavenly Wisdom be imposed and
borne without suffering and pain? Aut pati, ant
mori. Life without suffering is impossible ;
if truth,
if holiness, if virtue, friendship, if purity be life,
if
we must make up our mind either to suffer or to

perish.
And this, all the more, when we remember
that there are hours of special combat and fierce
temptation to be prepared for, when the rain

descends and the rushing flood rises and the storm
beats upon the citadel of our soul. For, against
these contingencies we are obliged to strengthen
ourselves in time of peace by frequent exercise, or
ascesis as it is called,
by the practice not merely
K
I4 6 THE GOSPEL OF PAIN.
of restraint but of mortification, by cutting off not

but also much
only all that is excessive or unlawful,
that is and permissible. These are the peace-
lawful
manoeuvres and sham-fights of the spiritual life,
or rather, of the moral life for we are still in the
realm of natural religion Nonne et ethnici hocfaciunt ?

;
Did not the Pagan stoics teach us to do these

things ? Were they not truly ascetics, passing the
same verdict upon life as St. Teresa Aut pati, aid :
won life without suffering is impossible. If we

are to be victorious in the conflict with self, if we
are not to be castaways, we must suffer ;
we must
chastise the body and bring it into subjection. If
to stand is to live, if to fall is to perish Aut pati, aid
mori we must either suffer or die.

Again, if we turn to the mystics,
to the prophets,
poets, and seers of all who being ages, to those

lifted up from the earth have drawn all men unto
themselves, whose eyes have been fixed beyond

human wont on the intolerable brightness of the face
of Truth, who have been caught up to the heavens
and have heard words which it is not lawful for
man to utter, save wrapped close in the shroud of
ask them
symbolism when we turn to these and
;
for the law of life, we get only the same sad answer:
suffer or
Aut pati, aid mori you must either die.
If any man will come after Me," says the Truth,

"
"let him take up his cross and follow Me;"

11
unless a man forsake that he hath, he cannot
all
be If light and vision be life, if

My disciple."
blindness and darkness be death Aut pati, aid mori

we must either suffer or die.
Forjeven the very body itself must be exalted,

purified,and spiritualized by suffering, by fast
and vigil and penance it must be subdued, ;
tranquillized, and, as it were, put to sleep before

itjis an apt medium for communication between
thisworld and the other, before it is attuned to
be a fit instrument of God s Holy Spirit. The
spiritual man
understands the deep things of the
spirit because they are spiritually apprehended,
but | the animal man never rises beyond the
laboured methods of reason he knows nothing ;
of the instincts of love, of that quick intuition

which leaps to the truth, from crag to crag, and
pinnacle to pinnacle, where others crawl and
clamber and stumble. Dilectiis meus, says Truth,
venit mihi saliens super monies "
My beloved comes to
Me leaping across the mountains."
"
What man can

know the counsels of God, or who can divine His
will ? For the thoughts of men are timid, and their
foresight is uncertain, because the corruptible body
weighs upon the soul, and its earthen tenement
drags down the mind with its many thoughts."
As far she can by suffering shake herself free
as
from the embrace of this body of death, so far can
the soul fly to the embrace of Truth, her
Spouse,
her Life: Aut pati, aut mori.
And we inquire of religion in its various forms,
if
with doctrine of sin and expiation, we universally

its
get the same response as from hedonism or stoicism

or mysticism Aut pati, aut mori" Either suffer or
:
Without the shedding of blood, without

die."
penance and sackcloth and ashes, there is no re-

mission of guilt ;
the soul that sinneth it shall
either suffer or die. For sin is more than the folly
of self-hurt and self-destruction, more than a
transgression of order. It is an offence against
God the Ordainer it is a rebellion of will against

;
will, of person against person, of the creature

it is the uprising of a wave
against the Creator ;
that flings itself in vain pride against the solid rock,

to be thrown back and dashed to pieces for its
pains. Reason can ill-fathom the mystery, but the
instinct of all races has taught them that sin is in
some sense balanced and set right by suffering, and
that without suffering the disease is irremediable
and mortal. Aut pati, aut mori ; if sin be death, if
absolution be life, we must either suffer or die.
But in all this we have not yet touched the
secret of St. Teresa s passion for suffering for it ;
is no other than the secret of the lover. Love must

either suffer or die Ant pati, aut mori ; suffering is
its very and
life energy. As the ungrateful flame
burns and destroys what it feeds and lives upon,
so love seizes upon .the heart and gnaws at it night
and day, and wears and wastes the frail body, and
consumes its strength with labours and sorrows.
And this we see to the full in the Divine Lover,
the Archetype of all lovers, the
of Sorrows, Man
acquainted with grief, poor and in labours from His
youth, crushed and crucified and tormented by the
tyranny of love, and brought down to the very dust
of death. The Passion of Christ !
Why Passion ?
The all-devouring passion of God s love for the soul !
Was not suffering the very fuel and sustenance of

that fire a fireon the wood of the Cross,

to be fed
or else to die down and perish Ant pati, aut
mori. St. Paul knew well what love meant when
he said to his little ones We would have plucked
:
"
out our very eyes and given them to you." He had

learnt in the school of the Good Shepherd, who
gave His Body to be torn in pieces for His sheep,
His Blood to be drained out to the last drop :
Take ye and eat, this is My Body take ye and

"
drink, this is My Blood take all that I have, all

;
that I am Aut pati, aut mori I must suffer for you

or else die." Nonne opportuit Christum pati ? If
love must suffer, did it not behove Christ to suffer?
Can we clearly or fully explain this or justify it
in the cold light of reason ? Can chill philosophy

tell us why love thirsts for suffering, why it is
straitened till its baptism of blood be accomplished ?

Even if it cannot, what need we care ? Far more
things are true than can be explained, else, there
were little truth to be had. The experience of
mankind cannot only vouch for the fact, but can, so
to say, feel the reasonableness of it, better than it
can say it. Expertus potest credere ! Which of the

saints and lovers of Christ has not felt a craving
that suffering alone can appease, or has not felt
that he must simply die if he cannot suffer ? And
does not the history of every pure and noble human
love tell same tale ?
us the
Love, then, was the secret of St. Teresa s
passion for suffering love ever seeking to express

;
itself to the full making difficulties, where it found

;
none made to hand, that it might have occasion to

embody itself in strenuous effort, and so relieve the

pressure and tension of its unused energy and
strengthen itself by strong acts oft-repeated. Suffer
ing was the food and fuel for which it hungered :
Aid pati, aut mori, without suffering it must have

died down and perished.
And what was the secret ? For love of her love
is our life, the eternaland the secret
life of our soul ;
of loving God is the one thing worth knowing.

Alas man can but speak the words of that secret,
!
God alone can open the understanding man can ;
transmit the dead letter, God only can breathe into

it the quickening spirit man can plough and sow
;
and water, God alone can give the increase. It

cometh up we know not how. Let St. John, the
Doctor of Divine Love, the guardian of the mysteries
of the Sacred Heart, be our teacher.
"
We love
Him," he says, "because He first loved us." It is
when God first reveals Himself to the soul as her
Lover, that she falls at His feet as one dead, pierced
through, as St. Teresa saw herself in vision, with a
fiery dart. Vulnerasti cor meiim uno oculorum tuorum
Thou hast wounded my heart with one glance
"
of Thine eyes." One clear gaze upon that mystery,

and the soul is for ever the slave of love. As long
as our mind is filled with some distorted abstract,
half-true notion of the complete self-sufficingness of
God, as long as our puerile imaginings picture Him
as merely benevolent and patronizing in our regard,
as offering us the alms of His benefits, but caring
little whether we accept or decline them until we ;
receive and believe without understanding or recon-

ciling with His self-sufficingness, the mystery of

it
God dependence and indigence, love will but

s
slumber in our heart, as fire in the cold, hard flint

till struck from it by the steel.
But letus once look upon the love-worn face

of the Man of Sorrows, and read in its lines,
its tear-stains and blood-stains, the record of
the ravages of Divine love, pent up and com
pressed within the narrow walls of a finite heart ;
let us but see in Him

the Spouse of man s thought
less, thankless soul, coming to us in beggary, poor,
naked, hungry, and thirsty, to be enriched, and

clothed, and fed, and refreshed by our love let us ;
but hear Him as He knocks at our heart s portal

and cries :
Open to Me, My
"
My sister, spouse, for

My hair is drenched with the dew, and My locks
"
with the night rain let us but realize that in;
very deed our God wants us, pines for us, hungers
and thirsts for us, and lo we have passed from !
death unto from twilight to noonday, we have

life,
found a key to the seeming extravagances, the

the delirium, the reckless prodigalities of the
follies,
saints and of the King of saints, to whom not to
suffer was to die. Were that light to break upon us
only for a moment we could understand, as now we
cannot, the love that burned so fiercely in the heart
of Teresa, a love stronger than death bearing all ;
things, believing all things, hoping all things, endur

ing all things ;
a love which swept aside every
obstruction in impetuous course a love which
its ;
for twenty dark years endured the searching sword

of separation from the Beloved, the privation of all
consciousness of His presence, of all sensible conso

lation and spiritual joy ;
a love whose insupportable
strength at last shattered the too straitened vessel
of her heart, and lending wings to her emancipated
soul, bore it up to its nest in the embrace of God ;
towards the life of painless love matured and made

1
perfect by suffering.
1
A further elucidation of the doctrine of pain will be found in
the Appendix.
"QUID ERIT NOBIS?"
Ah ! if there were no hereafter

Christ,
were best to follow Thee
It still ;
Tears are a nobler gift than laughter ;
Who wears Thy yoke, alone is free. C.K.P.

IT may not be altogether useless and unprofitable
for us to see inwhat sense, if in any, we can accept
the sentiment embodied in these lines, and recon
cile it with the teaching of St. Paul, where he tells
us 1 that
if our hope in Christ be
only for this life,
then are we of all men most to be pitied, and
where he asks, what will it profit him (humanly
speaking) to have fought with wild beasts at
Ephesus if the dead rise not ? Let us eat and
"
drink, for to-morrow we die." Let us snatch the

fleeting day as it slips by, let us seize on each
precious now and make the most of it, let us
" "
crown ourselves with the perishable roses of life

before they fade, let us, not work, but rejoice and
make merry "while it is
yet day," ere the sombre
night of death wrap us in everlasting darkness and
forgetfulness.
St. Peter says to our Saviour Lo we have :
"
left all and followed Thee we have forsaken all ;
that makes life valuable to the majority of man-

1
i Cor. xv.
"QUID ERIT NOBISP"
kind, and we have embraced the life of the Cross ;
what therefore shall be our reward what shall we ;
get by it ?
"
And Jesus answers Amen, I say to :

"
you that you who have followed Me, in the Resurrec

tion, when the Son of Man shall sit upon the throne
of His majesty, shall sit on twelve thrones judging
the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one who
shall have left home, or brethren, or sisters, or
father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for

My Name shall receive a hundred-fold in the present
life, with persecutions, and shall possess everlasting

life/
At first hearing, this question of St. Peter s seems

to spring from a sentiment altogether opposite to
that which is expressed in the words :
Ah !
Christ, if there were no hereafter,
It still were best to follow Thee ;
and to that which taught Aquinas to answer the

question: "What reward wilt thou have?" with,
None other than Thyself, Lord
"
and which made ;

"
I had rather be a stranger

"
a Kempis cry out :
upon earth with Thee, than possess Heaven without

Thee. Where Thou art, there is Heaven; and taught
"
St. Francis Xavier to sing: "My God, I love Thee,

not because hope I for Heaven thereby ;
"
and even
which broke from the lips of Peter himself when he
Lord, though all men should forsake Thee,
"
cried,
yet not I. I will lay down my life for Thee; I am
ready to go with Thee to prison and to death
"
as
he would say: "Better to fail with Thee,
though
than to triumph without Thee; Truth is none the
"QUID ERIT NOBISP" 155
less great even should it never prevail, and the

gloom of Calvary no less glorious than the brightness
ofThabor."
And so if we look closely into the matter we

shall find that the very which he puts his
form in
seemingly ignoble question, exculpates him from all

Lo, we have left all and followed
"
ignoble intent.
Thee what therefore shall be unto us ?
;
Evidently
"
then, when they left all and followed Him, they

were moved by no definite prospect of other gain,
and it is only some considerable time after the event
that human prudence wakes for a moment from its
dream, to seek reason for what has been done
unreasoningly, in defiance of worldly wisdom, in a
sudden burst of Divine enthusiasm. There was no
reasoning or calculating, no quid erit nobis ? when,
at a word, or a glance, they left all and rose up and
followed Him, lured away from home and kindred
and possessions by the spell of His wondrous per
sonality, by the irresistible magnetism which draws
the soul back to the bosom of God, whence it
came. He Himself was that hundred-fold beside
whom all gain seemed but loss, whose possession
secured an immutable peace in the midst of the
bitterest persecution and temptation He was that ;
pearl of great price, cheaply purchased at the sacri

fice of home and brethren and sisters and father and
mother and wife and children and lands. Nor did

they pause to think, as they let go everything to
grasp at that treasure, whether it was to be the
possession of a moment or of eternity. Love does
not reason or reckon, but leaps up to follow
i 56 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?"
the Beloved blindfold

"
whithersoever He goeth,"
whether to prison and to death, or to victory and

Where Thou goest," it seems to say, I will
"
"
life.
go where
;
Thou lodgest, I will lodge where Thou ;
diest, I will die, and there also will I be buried."
Who has ever heard of any true human love which
tempered its sacrifices according to length of golden

days presumably in store for it or which regulated ;
its fervour on the principles which govern life-

insurance or who can believe that St. Peter s
;
enthusiasm would have been damped in any degree

had the cause of Christ been doomed to failure,
rather than to eternal victory ? Eamus et nos, he
would have said, et moriamur cum illo Let us "
also go and die with Him." Have not thousands

of heroes counted it gain to facs death and defeat
beside a loved leader and has any leader ever been
;
loved as Christ was ?
was for His own sake that they left all and
It
followed Him, and not for the sake of aught He

might give them. He Himself was the gift. But later,
when they heard our Saviour saying, Go, sell what "
thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have
treasure in Heaven, and then come and follow Me,"
they wondered what this treasure in Heaven might
be which was promised to those who should do
what they had already done. And what, in effect,
was it, but to be with Christ in His triumph as they
were to be with Him in His defeat; what, but the
eternal prolongation of the bliss which they had
already entered upon ? It was because they sought
nothing that they were to gain everything because ;
"QUID ERIT NOBIS?" 157
in blind obedience to the call of love they left all,
that they were to find all a hundred-fold in this

life, in spite of persecutions, and in the world to
come life everlasting ;

for in choosing Christ they
chose a treasure infinite and eternal, albeit they
knew it but indistinctly.
"
One day in Thy says David,

courts,"
"
is better
than a thousand ;"
one instant of eternal
life better
than a century of time one kiss from the lips of

;
God better than unending ages of the tenderest

human affection. And this were true even were it
not equally true that the embrace of the Creator
locks the soul to God s bosom for ever and for ever.
have been a man for a few brief
If it is better to
years, than a toad slumbering through a century or

more in the heart of a tree, it is also better to have
lived the highest life of the soul, to have breathed
the atmosphere of Heaven for even one day, than to
have passed a whole lifetime on a base or even on a
lower level,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.
How many lives have been ennobled, redeemed from

insignificance by the heroism or the inspiration of a
moment, or of a few moments, which has made
them immortal. How often have the stains of a
worldly or wicked career been wiped out by some
single purgatorial act of sacrificial unselfishness ?
Have we not all moments of clear insight or high
aspiration which are more precious to us than

weeks and months of our normal mediocrity? Is
i58 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?"
itnot by the recognition of this that the Church is

rightly excused from the charge
of prodigality and
extravagance when she crowns a momentary act of

of
pure love or Divine sorrow with the plenitude
her absolution and indulgence ?
Can we then doubt that if friendship with Christ,
the God-Man, be the highest life of which the soul
of man is capable, it must then be a good beyond
every other good, and one for which every other
should be sacrificed, since we should not attempt to
measure quantitatively, one against another, things
of a wholly different order. As a moment s thought
exceeds a life-time of sensation, so the briefest
in solid
experience of Divine friendship outweighs
value all other possible experiences in a lower plane.
Senectus enim venerabilis est non diuturna, nee annorum
numero computata. Cani enim stint sensus hominis et

immaculata Life is measured
"
atas senectutis vita
by experience, and not by years." One instant of

that immaculate life which the soul lives as it flits
like a moth through the bright, all-consuming,
all-purifying flame of the Divine presence, one
moment of close union with Eternal, the
the
Ancient of Days," and it
"
has lived with a fulness

of life all but Divine, made perfect in a
"
little
space, it has accomplished the labour of many

years."
We
have spoken so far of conscious personal
friendship with Christ, as being the essence of this
higher life whose value were no less supreme, even
were it but of briefest duration and of which it ;
may most truly be said,

Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.
But our concern here is rather with what we might
call the unconscious friendship with Christ of those

who walk with Him by the way, their hearts burning
within them, though their eyes are holden so that
they know Him not ;
those namely, who, not knowing
Christ, yet to some greater or less extent live the
life of Christ who, not having the Gospel, are
;
imbued with the principles and sentiments of the

Gospel, bei-ng a Gospel unto themselves ;
who
perhaps obscurely hear Him and feel Him guiding
them through the voice of conscience as the unseen
Shepherd and Bishop of their souls, ever walking
with them in the way in a word, those anima
;
naturalitev Christiana which the spirit of Christ

fashions to His likeness in all ages and climes.
Can it then be said, speaking of the life and way
of Christ, rather than of Christ Himself,
Ah !
It still were best to follow Thee,
were best, apart from all distinct recognition

it still
of that Heavenly Friend who is the Way, the Truth,

and the Life, to walk in the narrow way of the Cross,
life, for its own sake ?
to hold that truth, to live that
Needless to say, there have been many stoics
and even professed Christians who have maintained
that virtue is its own reward, apart from all its profit
able consequences here or hereafter so that if we ;
assume, as well we may, that Christ gives us the

very highest pattern of virtue, we can compel
"0C7/D
ERIT NOB IS ? "
such thinkers at least to admit that to follow Christ

were best even if there were no hereafter. Neverthe
less, there are certain latent fallacies in their funda

mental tenet which make us a little chary of such
allies, fallacies,however, rather in the analysis and
expression of their sentiment, than in the sentiment
itself, which, rightly apprehended, is the noblest we
are capable of.
There is a certain proud, pharisaic self-sufficiency

that may lead a man to seek virtue, not for virtue s
sake, but for his own sake, in a spirit of acquisitive
ness and self-culture. Virtue may be sought merely
as an adornment of an idolized self, being sub
ordinated to self as a means to an end even as the ;
same type of character seeks learning and artistic
skill, not for love of their inherent excellence, nor

even for their advantageous results, but simply
because self must have the best of everything.
As the pagan cultivated his body by gymnastics
and made it obedient to his will, so by virtue he
sought to secure a mastery over his spiritual faculties,

enabling him to conduct himself skilfully and success
If he was ashamed
fully through the warfare of
life.
of a shambling gait, he was still more, but in much

the same way, ashamed of intemperance or any
other want of self-control. This was, in one sense,
seeking virtue for its own sake, for its inherent
excellence. Yet in that it made self the best-
loved and ultimate end for whose sake virtue was
loved, it was not really a pure love of virtue as of
something greater than self, to which self should be
submitted as a servant or slave. True, it was no
"QUID ERIT NOB ISP" 161
small wisdom to reckon virtue as the best of acquisi

tions, the highest subjective perfection, to seek it,
not as a means to any other less worthy acquisition,
such as wealth or honour, and, so far, for its own
sake but it is only when truth and virtue are
;
recognized in a more or less obscure way as having

some strange, absolute claim over us, some objective
right altogether irrespective of our private interest
or subjective well-being, that they are strictly sought
for their own sake, as ultimate ends to which self is
wholly subordinated.
To the superficial this would seem to be a fallacy
of the imagination, decreeing divine honours to
personified abstractions writ large, leading the poet
to an idolatrous worship of Beauty, the philosopher
and moralist to the worship of Truth and Virtue.
But on closer thinking, we have here but a con
fused recognition of the
imperative authority of
Conscience, which tells us that we are by nature
but instruments for the working out of an end
communicated to us in detail in our own reason,
but conceived in its entirety only in the mind of
that personal Reason whose creatures
subsistent
we and who guides and moves us through
are,
Conscience for the execution of His will the will,
namely, of the living and subsistent Truth and
Goodness. Hence every good man, however dark
or confused his theology may be, feels a conviction
that the cause of Truth and Right has a claim upon
him to which every private gain and pleasure must
be sacrificed ; that they are universal ends which he
must prefer to all particular ends. He cannot resist
L
l62 "QUID ERIT NOBISP"
the indistinct impression that in trespassing against

Truth and Right, he is violating not merely a
possible harmony and order, but a harmony and
order actually willed by a will other than his own,
a will with which he therefore comes into a relation
of hostility and conflict.
Wheresoever conscience is awakened even to this
universally confessed that Truth

it is and
extent,
be followed for their own sakes, and
Right are to
other considerations of advantage;
apart from all
that they are
although when once we recognize
then "Truth
personal and not mere personifications,
for its own sake," means "
God for His own sake."
It sometimes contended that the joy which

is
of having done right (that is,

springs from the sense
from a sense of union with God), and
interpretatively,
which is after all a subjective pleasure, however
and is the true and only motive
spiritual exquisite,
of such conduct and that ;
it is because this pleasure
outbalances the pleasures of wrong-doing that
all
some refined natures find virtue the best investment

for yielding good interest in the way of enjoyment.
But, in the first place, it is those who act conscien
tiously as a matter of course
and habitually, who
are least sensitive to any particular glow of self-
satisfactionwhen they do well; as, on the other
hand, the
it isoldest and hardest sinners who are
most utterly dead to all sense of uneasiness and
remorse. An act of virtue is one by which we
chose to do what is right because it is right, and
not because it is pleasant virtue sought for the ;
sake of the afterglow is not virtue at all, but the

"QUID ERIT NOB IS?"
163
subtlest self-love. That same sweetness may be

foreseen as a side issue, and may even be desired
secondarily; but as soon as it diverts the soul s
eye from its direct intuition of right for right s sake,
and becomes itself the direct end to which virtue
isbut a means, then virtue is dishonoured and its
supreme claims are disallowed.

Besides, human nature
is, after all, calumniated
by this
quasi-hedomist view of the matter and every ;
really good and virtuous man, and every man in

his really good and virtuous acts, implicitly con
fesses the truth :
Ah !
It still were best to follow Thee.
It may even be said that in this, the verdict of

the purer and nobler refinements on Epicureanism
is not different from that of the higher stoicism.
It is possible to take the grosser sense of the maxim,

"
Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," as

a summary of historical Epicureanism ; but in the
abstract this grossness is no essential part or
product of the theory, and is indignantly repudiated
by its most authoritative exponents. "
Carpe diem,
live each moment in the best way possible, get all
you can out of it, as though it were your first and
last, make
the very most of every atom of time, so
as to live as fully as possible, to taste and experience
all that is
really best while it is within your reach."
This is the cardinal
principle, rather than any final
view as to the precise nature of the "best" in
question. To regard sensual pleasure, or any lower
1 64 "QUID ERIT NOB ISP"
sort of enjoyment, as the best and ideal form of

experience, is, theoretically at least, no necessary
part of this philosophy. So far, at all events, there
is an accord between
Epicurean and Christian
teachers as to the supreme and in some sense
independent value of each present moment of expe
rience viewed in its isolation. If there be a duty of
looking back to the past and forward to the future,

in order that we may make the very most of the
present, there is also a dreamy, profitless retro
spection, full of vain regrets over what is sealed up
and irremediable, and an impossible or excessive
straining into the future with anxious eyes and
doubting heart, which is altogether contrary to the
virtue of Christian hope. Each little act of the
saint is idealized, at least by the end to which it
is directed ; at every point of his conscious existence
he can, if he will, touch the highest, living the
soul s an eternal life, each instant as it
fullest life,
passes. This is the lesson of three lives lived at

Nazareth, and of thousands fashioned to the same
type.
The very sorrows and crosses of life, borne rightly,
have a sweetness of their own known to the elect few;
even as what is biting and severe to ordinary taste,
pleases the discriminating palate, or as seeming
discords are harmonious to the trained ear. Surely
none ever tasted life so deeply, so fully, as the
Man of sorrow and tears and if there never was ;
sorrow like unto His sorrow, neither was there

ever a secret joy like unto His joy the joy of a soul
that loves widely, deeply, and utters its love in
suffering. Take the world as it is, with its sorrow

ing and afflicted millions what life were so full, so
glorious, so joyful in the midst of sorrow, as the
life of one who should love all with a passionate
devotion, who should seek and find relief in suffering

for all.
Thus, following in His wake whose meat was

to do the Father s will and to perfect His work
while it was yet day ere the night came on, the
saints have made the maxim of carnal prudence
their own in a mystic and spiritual sense :
"
Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Christ is
that food and Christ is that drink. In expressing

Christ, or the Christian ideal, in every moment of
its activity, the soul lives its highest and most
blessed life; it snatches the passing "now," that
acceptable time, that day of salvation, doing with
its might, in the highest and noblest way, all that
its hand working while it is yet day,

finds to do,
ere the night cometh wherein no man can work. 1
The real fault of even the most refined form of
Epicureanism seems to be the tendency to luxuriate
in the sensation of satisfaction which accompanies
the highest life, and to pervert this side issue into
an end ;
to practise self-sacrifice, not for its own
sake, but for the exquisite pleasure consequent on
the thought that we have acted nobly or beautifully.
1
Cf. "
Live while you live, the Epicure would say,

And taste the pleasures of the passing day ;
Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries,

And give to God each moment as it flies ;
Lord, in my life let both united be,

I live to if I live to Thee."
pleasure
T 66 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?"
As for the modern school of positivism, which

claims Comte founder and exponent, it is
as its
avowedly agreement with the principle for which

in
we are contending. For all to whom kindness is
the noblest and sweetest use of life, to whom it is
its own reward, are agreed that even if there were
no hereafter, yet of all lives the life of altruism is the

best. Mill and others have hopelessly failed in
their attempt to show that altruism and real
unselfishness are mere refinements of self-seeking;

instinct of our
"
"
for in truth the other-regarding

"
soul is as irreducible and as primitive as the self-
more so. Nature s first care

regarding," nay,
and deepest implanted impulse is for the specific
and common good, to which the good of the indi
vidual but ministers. .That apart from Divine
sanctions, but few would embrace the life of
altruistic does not make it less true
self-sacrifice,
that it were the best life to embrace. Few know
where true happiness is to be found. In philosophy,
as in faith, strait the gate and narrow the way
is
that leads to life, and few there be that find it for

themselves, if they are not taught and guided. Our
chief quarrel with positivism is that, while rightly
Insisting on the promotion of human happiness,
it
evades the difficulty of defining that happiness or ;
still worse, it places it in conditions that can never
possibly be realized on earth for the great majority

of mankind. It deludes us with the hopes of some
distant terrestrial paradise as unsubstantial as fairy-

land. Christ, on the other hand, tells us with
terrible frankness that there is no escape from the
Cross, and that all we can do is to learn to love it,
and to utilize its hidden healing power. He does

not beguile us with the fond fancy that this earth
will one day cease to bring forth thorns and briers,
but teaches us to plait them into garlands. Ecce
Homo ! Behold the perfect man, the perfect human
life,the life of mighty love uttering itself in the
endurance of pain and sorrow and humiliation !
For we cannot, as Catholics, agree with those

who would commend the Way of the Cross as the
best, simply because it leads to Heaven in a life
after this or even because, being the way chosen
;
by Christ, it derives an extrinsic honourableness

from Him. We hold rather that, taking this finite
world as it is, the Way of the Cross is, in the nature
of things, the most perfect way, the best way, the
way most befitting the highest capacities of the
human mind and heart. It is not the best because
it leads to Heaven, or because Christ chose it ; but
contrariwise, Christ chose it, and God rewards it,
because it is the best. It is par excellence the way

and the truth and the life, by which alone man
comes to the Father and puts on divinity and
immortality. So far as the rewards attached to
the following of Christ are in any sense additional
to its natural consequences, it is because, that life
being the best, God wills to crown it and make it

still better Habenti dabitur.
To return, then, to St. Paul. Truth, however
seemingly many-membered, as
apprehended piece
meal by us, in itself is one and simple. Let a single
article of the Catholic creed be tampered with, and
168 "QUID ERIT NOBIS?"
the whole fabric crumbles to ruin. The glorious

Resurrection of Christ and from the His saints
dead, is the seal of Divine approval set on the

eternal worthfulness of the Way which He walked,
the Truth which He taught, the Life which He
lived. It is the sign, not the cause, of that worth-
fulness,which, moreover, needs this Divine affirma

tion and sanction for the sake of the many whose
eyes are too weak to discern the secret beauty

revealed to the chosen disciples of the Cross. Nay,
even the faith of these is ever apt to fail, is ever
failing, in a world to which Christ is a fool and

His Cross folly ;
and in hours of darkness and
weakness
When our light is low,
When the blood creeps and the nerves prick
And tingle and the heart is sick
;
And all the wheels of being slow
in such hours we need a Divine assurance that our

faith is not vain ;
that we are not mere dreamers,
in lovewith the fictions of our own fancy, as we
might be tempted to think were it not that our
trembling soul is steadied by the solid fact of the
resurrection,which assures us that God judges as

we judge, and that our reason is true to the Divine
Reason when we say :
Ah ! if there were no hereafter,

Christ,
were best to follow Thee.
It still
Tears are a nobler gift than laughter ;
Who wears Thy yoke alone were free.

THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
Locum refrigerii, lucis, et pads.
"A
place of refreshment, of light, and of peace."
Canon of the Mass.
I.
AMONGST the other outworks and safeguards of

Divine charity, we must number a longing and
desire for Heaven. Heaven is counted among
those four "
last things
"
which are to be the theme

of deep and continual meditation. As we should
pray for an abiding fear of Hell, so also should we
pray for an ardent desire of Heaven, lest at anytime
our love of God having grown cold and feeble, we
should need the assistance of a motive appealing
directly to our rational self-regard. For though
Heaven consists substantially and principally in the
love of God, wherein our soul reaches its highest
perfection and happiness, yet this desire for our

own happiness remains strong and intact even when
we have ceased to identify our happiness with the
possession of God. Charity is a purely unselfish,
"
unselfing
"
virtue, whose object is God and God s
glory, whose motive is God s inherent goodness

and beauty but holy hope
is self-regarding
; wisely,
rightly, supernaturally looks to our own perfec it
tion and happiness, which, as we have said, is rightly

1 7o THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
to be found in Divine charity. Charity then is the

object of Christian hope or, as we say, grace
;
"
here and glory

"
hereafter grace being the seed,

and glory the full-blown flower of Divine love. Our
happiness lies in unselfish love, in forgetting our
selves and living in God, and in our fellow-man.
Hence, true, wise self-regard bids us cease to regard
ourselves, or rather to take a truer and wiser view
of ourselves, to recognize that we are made, not
for ourselves, but to be members of God and of one
another ;
for a collective life, love, praise, and joy.
Thus when our love of God is growing cold, it is
well for us to appeal to our rational self-love to ;
remind ourselves that His ways are ways of pleasant

ness and all His paths are peace ; that, eventually,
the yoke of the Cross is easy and the burden
light compared with the galling yoke of sin ;
that
the steep and narrow way of unselfishness leads to
fuller life and joy; while the broad, easy, down-hill,
selfish road ends in destruction, death, and misery.
For when we have ceased to love, we can still
remember the joy that we found in loving, and long
to be able to love once more.
And if even on earth we find our substantial
peace and joy in the love and friendship of God, in

unselfish service and devotion to His mystical
members, we may well find a strong motive for
perseverance in the prospect of the marvellous
amplification which that charity will receive when it
breaks through the sod into the light and sunshine

of eternity and unfolds its latent treasure of leaf
and flower, of colour, form, and fragrance.
THE LIFE EVERLASTING. 171
We assume as a first principle that man was

made to praise God, and that this life of praise is
here but rudimentary or germinal that our present
;
mortal state is essentially embryonic, a time of

and growth a time of trial and
development ;
combat. Man s life is a warfare.

on earth Warfare
is essentially a transitional state, being eventually a
means to secure a fuller peace. All evolution and

and suffering.
growth is attended with great pain
Nature herself is said to be groaning and travailing,
her deliverance. This is the Christian
expecting
view of the present life a view abundantly denied
by the world and by the worldly.
Man was created,
not for this world, but for the next just as the ;
does not exist for its present larval con

grub
dition of life, but for its final life of winged
liberty.
This no way countenances the heresy which
in
denies all value to our natural and temporal
next
existence, as though it had no reference to the
world or were not altogether subordinated and
directed to it. At the other extreme, we have the
base view of utilitarian Christianity, which believes,
indeed, in the life to come, yet subordinates
it
to the present life, as though it were merely a

sanction, a bribe, or a threat to secure
such
conduct as conduces to social and individual welfare
and prosperity in the present world ;
thus making,
so to say, eternity a useful appendix to time, instead
of regarding time as but the preface or prelude to
eternity. This is a view well according with the
Erastian form of Christianity fairly prevalent in this
172 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
Protestant country, where the Church is regarded as

a function of the State, subservient to social and
political ends, its work being to secure those public
virtues indispensable to commercial success and to
civic tranquillity and health. This it is to effect by
godly doctrine, and by an insistence on that almost
pagan aspect of the Deity which views Him as a
State-God," as a God concerned, not principally
"
with the sanctification of individuals, but with the

national greatness and prosperity. Such is, of
course, the teaching of Hobbes and the British
philosophers of the Protestant era, who subordinate
the individual to the State, as though the State
could have any other raison d etre but the perfection
of its members distributively and individually. It
is altogether in harmony with such a thought to
regard Heaven and Hell and the life to come, as

mere sanctions to secure good conduct in the
present life, as means to that end ;
in a word, to
invert the true order of things.
It is because we live in such an atmosphere of
unbelief and misbelief that we ourselves come to be
so listless about Heaven ;
or even to think it some
thing spiritually imperfect to dwell much upon the
theme, lest we should be reproached with holding a
"reward-and-punishment" Christianity; a reproach
which Erastianism has, not unreasonably, earned,
and which unfortunately is extended to Catholic
Christianity by those who are as ignorant of that
religion as South Sea islanders.
We are also to some extent affected by the
purist or quietist fallacies of certain Catholic
writers, orby our false understanding of the senti

ments of others who have written and spoken truly
enough of the self-forgetful nature of perfect love.
We think that, because hope and fear are in some
sense cast out by perfect love, that we should not
concern ourselves much about them, but should
regard them as transient phases of our spiritual
evolution, as "the things of a child," to be put
away by those who have reached manhood s
maturity.
Yet, in very truth, both hope and fear are so
indissolubly connected with love that they all grow
pari passu. Fear, as we have elsewhere said, is the
very fibre and backbone of reverential love, being
begotten of a sense of God s greatness, justice,
power, indignation, and other masculine
" "
attri
butes, which very attributes are components of His

lovableness, since what wins our love is the thought
that one so great should love one so little, that
one so high should stoop so low, that one so
great should be so merciful, that so strong and
invincible an indignation should be chained down in
the bonds of a love yet stronger and more invincible.
And thus in the saints the measure of love has
always been the measure of fear, albeit their fear is
no longer servile when it has given birth to love and
when love is matured so as no longer to need the
aid of servile fear, but to be itself an all-sufficient
spring of action. It is not fear but, as Aquinas
says, the servility of fear which is cast out by

perfect love.
And so with holy hope, as far as it too is in
I74 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
some sense servile and self-regarding; bound and
not free narrow and not universal. This servility

;
of hope is cast out by perfect love though hope ;
for with love. It is the

itself grows pace pace
rational desire of our own highest happiness and
of our spiritual development that makes us seek
to become unselfish and full of self-forgetting charity.
We come recognize that our own happiness
to
must never be the direct object of our quest;
that it is by resigning it, by ceasing to seek for
it, nay, by sacrificing it,
that we best secure it.
"He that seeketh his life shall lose it; he that
loseth his life Happiness comes to
shall save it."
us as a side issue of a nobler end, and surprises us

its when we have at last succeeded
by presence just
in putting it out of our heads as an object of con
sideration. then, if we dwell on it, caress it,
Even
foster it, and try to retain it, it eludes us like our
own shadow so coy is happiness, the child of self-
;
forgetting love.
and
Their hope is undoubtedly the keenest
of God which
strongest who have tasted the peace
all understanding, who have known the
passes
if by hope we mean
happiness of unselfish love,
placing our whole happiness, our heart s supreme
treasure, in God. Hope and fear alike are strongest
when love is strongest. The more we realize the
loveliness of God the more must we long for Him,
that is, long to love Him more.
The that all self-
quietist view falsely supposes
regard is selfishness in the bad sense. But, in truth,
these two fundamental, self-regarding impulses of
hope and fear, even in their imperfect or servile
form, are not only blameless but laudable. The

tendency towards self-good, self-evolution, and
private interest is a force which, unlimited and
unrestrained, would tend to lawlessness and evil ;
but governed by a higher law and love to which it
subserves, it is altogether right and helpful. Nature
never intended it to be a free force but one essenti
;
ally destined to subjection and bondage to a higher

force. Under the guidance of God the self-seeking
instinct of the individual brute-animal is subservient
and conducive to a wider interest, namely, the good
of the species, which is God s more principal care.
And this is no less true of man s spiritual self-seeking
instinct. Thus, for example, there is no positive
selfishness in the conduct of one who is occupied
wholly with fitting himself and his family to fill
creditably their due station in society, albeit he does
not explicitly think of or intend the general social
good thence resulting. But if, in the pursuit of
wealth and culture he implicitly or explicitly excludes
the desire to benefit society, if he injures others by
injustice or cruelty, or if he otherwise impedes their
due prosperity, he is positively selfish and formally
hurtful to the common welfare. If, on the other
hand, he explicitly adverts to the bearing of his own
on the public advantage, if he intends the latter so
principally that he would freely forego his private
gain for the sake of the general welfare, then he
is
positively and uses his natural self-
unselfish,
regarding impulse very end for which it was
for that
given him, and in the way in which it was intended

i 76 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
to be used, that is, to facilitate the fulfilment of his

first and highest duty duty to God and to his
God s interest in human society. Thus, too, we
say that all the virtues subordinate to charity, such
as mercifulness, temperance, purity, and the rest,
are not useless because charity includes the aim of
all others ;
but their work is to facilitate the designs
of charity, who governs them all as her ministers.
Hope and fear, therefore, are the ministers of

Divine love, governing us in its absence or during
its minority ; serving it when it is present.
There is another form of self-regard which, far
from being selfish, is pure unselfishness, namely, the
self-regard of him who has died to himself, who has
put on a wider self, who has merged his being and
life, his sorrow and joy, his interests,
his hopes, his
fears in those of Christ and of the children of Christ,
his fellow-members in Christ s Mystical Body. For
it is the self-regard of one who really and adequately
knows himself what he is by nature and by God s

intention ;
who knows that he is not for himself but
for others ;
that he is God s instrument before all
else intended primarily for God and God s Kingdom,
and that he is to secure his own happiness in the
universal happiness which he shares. But plainly it
is only by a violent non-natural use of language
that we can call this, self-regard,"

while to call it
selfishness were absurd. This deepest appetite of
our spirit which demands a Divine and universal
happiness for its food, is indeed within us. It is
ours, and yet ours precisely in virtue of our

it is
essential subordination to God as instruments of

His universal purpose, and as moved

by His will,
even as the members are guided the head to an
by
end of which they have no consciousness. Man,
indeed, being intelligent, comes gradually to under
stand the whence and whither of his
extra-regarding
instincts he comes to recognize them as the will of
;
God working in him, and to throw himself freely

into sympathy with them and to
obey them as
Divine behests conveyed to him
by the voice of
conscience. It is then only that man knows
himself,
recognizes his true self, and no longer lives for that
false, separate self, but for the self which is merged

into God.
II.
St. Paul tells us that the saints of God when on

earth were as strangers and
pilgrims, having here
no abiding looking for "the City that hath
city,
foundations,"no mere encampment in the desert,
but Jerusalem, the city of
peace, founded on the
everlasting hills, immovable as the Eternal Rock,
"whose builder and maker is God."
They were as
one in a foreign country on some brief
business,
where the faces, the language, the
ways are strange,
uncongenial, repugnant whose heart is elsewhere,
;
who impatiently counts

the days and hours
which must pass before he can
gather his effects
together and hurry to that goal of his desires called
home. "
Strangers and pilgrims

"
strangers to all ;
around them, awkward and out of

place, as one
of noble and refined nature whose lot has cast
him with the vulgar and semi-barbarous, who,
M
178 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
notwithstanding, have their own curious code of

honour and etiquette, or what corresponds to such.
moreover, for they never stay their

"
Pilgrims,"
homeward march for a moment, seeing in this life

the ladder that leads them upward step by step to
the face of God, to their P atria the dwelling of
their Father who is in Heaven.
And we speak of this Patria in terms of place,
if
as a pilgrimage from earth to Heaven or in terms ;
of time, as a passing from the present to the future

life, we but figure forth the process by
which the
soul is transformed from the death of nothingness
whence it was drawn, into the fulness of life in the
bosom of the Father whither it is drawn. For if
our Father is in Heaven, our Heaven is also in the
Father nay, our Father is Heaven.
; speak We
1
indifferently of our entry into God
s Kingdom, or of
the advent of God s Kingdom into us for in sub ;
stance Heaven is the absolute domination of Divine

love over the soul whose eyes, first opened in this
dim cavern of time, have been taught to bear the
growing brightness until at last they have dared to

fix their steadfast gaze upon the very source of all
light the True Light which enlighteneth every man

that cometh into the world.
In each of its free acts the soul tries, then and
there, to realize itself, to enter into that beatitude
1
Cf. Licet gaudium seternse beatitudinis in corhominis intret,
"
maluit tamen Dominus ei dicere Intra in gaudium ut mystice

: ;
innuatur, quod gaudium illud non solum in eo sit intra, sed undique
ilium circumdans et absorbens et ipsum velut abyssus infinita
submergens." (St. Bernardine of Siena, Serm. de St. Joseph.}
which it
dimly conceives, and by the desire of which
it is moved and governed continually. It is as a
caged bird whose every fruitless struggle and effort
aims at perfect liberty, and cries out: "Who will
give me the wings of a dove ? then would I fly away
and be at rest for it is this dream of rest
;
"
which is the motive of all our action, and labour,

and strife. No two conceive quite the same notion
of rest for their souls. Many conceive it altogether
amiss; others, with Augustine, look only to God,
and cry Our heart is restless, Lord, till it rest in
:
"
Thee "
but all alike are dominated in every free act

;
by some such End or Ideal or Final Rest struggling

to be born in them be it true rest or false be it :
Heaven or Hell. All are striving to pass from time

to eternity; from restlessness to
repose; from a state
of change to an unchanging state; from their
pilgrimage to their home; from the tent-city of
nomads to the city that hath foundations." Our
"
free actions may be likened to the blows of some

engine of war which beat and beat against a fortress
gate till one of them at last realizes what all the
rest, of their very nature and purpose, tended to
realize, or which any of them might have realized.
So each free act by itself is governed and informed
or at least checked
by the latent presence in the soul
of an ideal of rest, of
happiness, of home, which it
abortively tries to realize, but which some last act
will alone succeed in realizing. On the direction
of that last act after which we
pass into our time
less, changeless state, all depends.
The saints, then, on earth have ever echoed the
i So THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
aspiration of St. Paul Cupio dissolvi" I long to be

:
dissolved and to be with Christ," to be uncaged and

fly away and be at rest. The first instinct of love
is company of the Beloved, to
to seek the closer
enjoy His sweet converse, to lean on His breast at

supper, to sit at His feet and hear His words.
And as love grows, this instinct becomes more
urgent and imperious, more painful and galling
when thwarted and yet the very strength of
;
unselfish love nerves the soul to endure the bitter

ness of separation in the interests of the Beloved.
If for his own sake Paul longed to be released and to
be with Christ, yet for the sake of Christ and Christ s
little ones he was content to remain, and to remain
for ever, were it needful for their confirmation and

consolation.
1
And this was the love of the glorious
Martin when he prayed, Lord, if I am needed
"
St.
do and
"
for Thy people, I not begrudge the labour ;
of the Blessed Mother herself, who willingly lingered

in exile after her Son s ascension that she might be
to the infant Church had been to Him.
all that she
Coarctor e duobus on the rack between
St. Paul is
these two desires which are born and grow and

strengthen together; between the claims of the
individual member and those of the whole body ;
between supernatural self- regarding tendencies, and

the demands of charity and unselfish love which in
certain adjuncts require the repression and morti
fication of the former. Thus in our time of
pilgrimage dum peregrinamur a Domino the tension
and the pain is, or should be, ever on the increase,
1
Philipp. i.
23 25.
according as the conflicting desires the desire to

stay and the desire to go grow stronger. But "
when that which is perfect is come, then that which

is in part shall be done
away," the interests of both
tendencies shall coincide, "and there shall be no
more sorrow," no more coarctatio e duobus.
"
Further, this very longing to depart and be with

"
Christ is of itself blind and

self-defeating, and
a more clear-sighted will be to
self-regard prudent
see that the interests of
hope and charity are in truth
identical, and that the self-restraint and self-denial
involved in the submission of the
single member to
the whole Body, is for its eventual and more
really
lasting well-being. He whose love leads him to
mortify the present "longing to depart
"
strengthens
and deepens that longing with
every new exercise of
love, and strains more tightly the tension of that
bond which at the instant of release will draw him
to the bosom of God, to the embrace of Christ :
O days and hours your work is this,

To hold me from my proper place,
A little while from his embrace,
For fuller gain of after- bliss.
No will or appetite, however high or holy, can be
obeyed blindly and without limit, save only the will
and love of God. Every other wish and interest
must be stayed, and questioned, and examined
by
that sovereign rule and law in subjection to which
it
eventually finds its most solid gain. Else its
rebellious impetuosity is
self-defeating, and a series
of
ever-weakening present ecstasies ends in a total
enfeeblement and degradation of the impulse.
1 82 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
Never, therefore, may the desire to be with Christ,

viewed as our own personal rest and separate gain,
be supreme and unqualified. It must always be
subordinate to love, whose minister and child it is :
Father, if it be possible yet not my will but Thy

"
will be done." But as an accelerating and secondary

motive it can never be too strong. Thus it is in all
true, pure, reverential human love, which is ever

willing to bear pain, even the pain of separation
the greatest of all pains, the last and hardest
sacrifice.It is no pure or unselfish love which
basks in the presence of a spouse or child, in the

warm glow of domestic affection, when their true
interest, as well as the will of God, demands that
heart-strings should be rent on both sides and the
keen sword of separation endured unflinchingly. It
is the stronger and nobler love which both nerves to
the sacrifice, and sacrifices most ;

which suffers most
acutely, and yet mostreadily.
It is in conformity with all that has been said
that we read how our Divine Saviour, the joy "for
that was set before Him, endured the Cross and

despised the Not as
though this personal,
shame."
and in some sense

private joy and glory, were the
leading or principal motive of His endurance. That
motive was the love of the Father, of the Father s
will and the Father s Kingdom. Yet so far as the
Cros3 and the shame were grievous to the weakness
of the flesh, their burden was lightened or counter
poised by the prospect of a more than compensating
joy and glory. So it is St. Paul balances the light
and momentary afflictions of this life against the
great weight of eternal glory in the future, and finds

the former in comparison not worthy of considera
tion. It is the
"
What doth it profit ?

"
motive in
another form not the highest motive, but subsidiary
to the highest not love, but the prop and fence of
;
love. And he tells us how this saint and that

suffered various torments and privations
looking to
"
the reward"
Adspiciebat enim in remunerationem ; i.e.,
not disdaining to enlist the services of prudent and

supernatural self-regard in the cause of love thus
counteracting the weakness of the shrinking flesh.
And, after all, what is this reward that Christ

and His saints looked forward to ? Surely no selfish
or isolated joy but the joy of one who lives for
;
others, and in others, and makes their happiness his

own who finds though he does not seek his own
;
reward in the attainment of his unselfish ends. It

is not his own paltry share in the booty, but the
glory and triumph of his country that animates the
loyal soldier to bravery. That is the joy that he

sets before him. He knows that even his own
personal share in the general triumph, the mere
gratification of his passionate patriotism, will more
than repay the toils and wounds and perils of the
present moment. Similarly, he who is wise enough
to see that in unselfishness and self-forgetfulness lies
the shortest road to private happiness, knows well
that in losing his life he is saving it and though ;
private happiness is not his direct aim, yet with the

assured expectation of it he can quiet the rebellious
clamours of short-sighted self-love.
Such was the joy that Christ set before Himself;
the joy of the Father, the joy of the whole body of

the redeemed, of His Blessed Mother, of all the
angels and saints that common joy whereof He ;
was the cause, and wherein, as Head of the Mystic

Body, He was to be chief participant that Gaudium ;
Domini into which the saints enter, as members

enter into the life of the head.
How impossible, then, for them not to long and
cry out for that consummation of all their desires ;
for that full and perfect possession of God, or rather
possession by God, which is the very substance of

Heaven accessory and accidental joy being but
all
Pearl of great price," the

"
the setting that of
Kingdom of God Oh, how lovable

"
in the heart.
are Thy dwellings, Thou Lord of hosts," cries
David my soul hath a desire and longing to enter
"
into the courts of the Lord ; my heart and my flesh
rejoice in the living God. . . .Blessed are they that

dwell in Thy house." And why blessed? "They
will be always praising Thee," always entering into
the and joy and praise of their Lord; always
life
fulfilling the end for which their soul

was created
and designed by Love. And again One day in :
"
the now of
"
Thy courts is better than a thousand ;
eternal "being,"
better than ages of imperfection
and the joy of a single instant of that
"
"
becoming ;
rest, accumulated joys of an endless

than the
pilgrimage. And, As the hart longs for the water- "
springs, so longs my soul after Thee, O God. My

soul is athirst for God the strong, the mighty when ;
shall I come and appear before the face of my

God?"
We, on the other hand, know little of these

longings. Far from feeling ourselves strangers and
pilgrims on earth, we find ourselves only too much
at home in this world our surroundings are by no
;
means very uncongenial and if at times death

;
seems welcome, it is rather in its negative aspect

as an end of ills we know, than as an entrance into
a life which has but feeble attraction for us.
This may be partly due to the dimness of our
faith, which must almost necessarily languish in an
age and country where it has lost the support of

public acknowledgment and profession, where we
feel that perhaps the majority of the cultured and
educated question the very existence of a future life,

or at most regard it as a tenable hypothesis, but in
no way to be used as the governing principle of
individual and social conduct. Partly it is to be
ascribed to our own spiritual state and to the neglect
of meditation on the mysteries of our holy religion.
While in every other department of knowledge our
interest leads us from stage to stage, from the pueri
of our first conceptions to a greater maturity
lities
of comprehension here we remain content with

;
the notions gathered in our childhood, which are

no more suitable for our adult mind than is milk
diet for strongmen. We go through life with some
child s dream of Heaven, as of a cloud-built city
radiant with gold and colour and gleaming jewels,
peopled with bright-winged beings, and with those
whom we have loved here on earth where God,
;
too, has His throne of state and receives a service

of sweet song, of fragrant incense, of ceremonious
adoration. Nor do I say that our sensile imagi

nation can ever rise beyond such gaudy symbolism
when it endeavours to picture the unpicturable, and
to make visible the invisible. Nor yet are we free
to deny that with the risen and glorified body, there
will be also a new heaven and a new earth," in
"
which this sensible and physical order of existence

will endure insome spiritualized and transfigured
condition as an instrument of Divine praise. But
riper thought should teach us to see in these things
only the outward symbols and accessories of the
substantial joy of Heaven, which consists in the
possession of God, in the Communion of the Saints;

a joy which we begin to taste even here when the
charity of God is diffused in our hearts by the Holy
Ghost. Our reason working on our gathering self-
experience should convince us that it is only in

personal love, self-annihilating, adoring, unchanging,
eternal, that our heart can find rest and happiness ;
and that Heaven is Heaven just because it offers us

this. For what is Heaven but Eternal Life, an
entering into the Life of the Eternal, through the
unitive virtue of love. It is to see face to face that
Beauty, the very hint of which, known as we here

know it, by the rumour of faith or by the fringes of
its garment, can kindle a love which devours the
heart of the saints. If to hear of it can so dominate
and subdue the soul, what must it be to behold it ?
us forget what our faith teaches us as to

Nor let
our supernatural elevation to a destiny such as no

introspection would ever remotely suggest. Reason
ilone might possibly verify the assertion that we were
made to find happiness in some very close know
ledge and love of God, shared in common with all

the souls of the just made perfect. But faith tells
us that by grace we are re-created for a more intimate
union with the Divinity not merely to know and
;
love and rejoice in the same Divine Good wherein

God rejoices, but in some sort to apprehend it with
the same kind of act wherewith He apprehends it
an act which we call knowledge for want of a better
name, just as at times we speak of understanding as
seeing. principally by reason of this conformity

It is
to God in the mode of our knowledge and love and
joy that we are said to enter into that life of the

Eternal, which eye hath not seen nor ear heard
"
nor heart conceived."

And though in itself the Godhead is the same,
whether it be viewed with the eye of the natural
intellect or with the grace-anointed vision of the
saints, yet the aspect it presents to the beholder, the
impress it creates in him, the love it enkindles, is

all other.Indeed, even in the order of natural
vision, no two see quite the same beauty or are
incited by it to a precisely similar affection. Still
less can we compare the supernatural love and joy

of the blessed with that of nature
"
unelevated."
And if we turn to the object of this vision and

love, it is same object of Divine self-praise
that
wherein God
rejoices and wherein all His saints
rejoice, their joy and praise being, so to say, a
created and finite reverberation of the uncreated and
Infinite. It is found principally in the intrinsic
glory and beauty of the Divinity Itself, and second-

arily, in such communications of His glory as He

has imparted to His saints, whom He has gathered
round Him as a not unworthy crown of love s
triumph even as the Sun rays itself round with a
halo of brightness. In all this He rejoices as the
Sun in its own splendour. And each of the blessed
rejoices with Him in this collective
glory self-
forgetful, save so far as the glory of each is an
element in the glory of all. And if to none of those
blessed souls that glory is manifest as it can be only
to the mind of the Infinite, and if to no two of
them under the same aspect, yet there is a certain
harmony in their knowledge and love and praise ;
each and complementing what is wanting to

filling
the other; each an essential part in a perfect mosaic ;
each necessary to the effect of the whole all collec ;
tively making one mirror wherein God sees and

loves Himself anew, one complex chord of ever
lasting praise many eyes, yet but one vision many

; ;
hearts, yet but one love many voices and tongues,

;
yet but one song.
in.
If, however, our feeble mind soon wearies of the

strain, when it would try to form some conception
of that Eternal joy, that joy of the Eternal, which
eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor heart conceived ;
ifwe can never form any real image to ourselves of

what Heaven is, we can at least find rest and repose
in the thought of what it is not.
"
God shall
wipe away from their eyes, and there

all tears
shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying
nor any more pain, ... for the former things are
passed away." And again "They shall not hunger :
nor thirst any more nor shall the sun nor the heat
;
beat upon them Lamb in their midst shall

;
for the
be their Shepherd, and shall lead them to the
living
water-springs." And once more: "Blessed are the
dead who die in the Lord, for they shall rest from
their labours."
When we look upon this ruin of a world, such

as sin and its consequences have left it, we are still
able to figure some image to ourselves of that
Paradise which God intended to be the vestibule
of Heaven, the place of man s light exile and easy
probation. We can in some way conjecture what
this earthly would be were there no sin or selfish
life
ness, "no more death, nor crying, nor grief, nor

pain," no fruitless spiritual longings, no darkness
of ignorance and error, no wearisome toiling with
sweat of the brow for the bare necessities of life.
Even the poor relics of this ruin, how fair
they are !
how we treasure them up as the art-lover does the

stray fragments of some noble sculpture whose lines
tellthe tale of the beauty that belonged to the whole !
How lovely still is the face of nature; how sweet

her myriad voices And man, with all his vileness
!
and weakness, how lovable in spite of it, nay,

because of it If God Himself delights to be with
!
the children of men, if "our Maker is our husband "
and lover, is it wonderful that we should be tempted

to cling to one another
As if our heaven and home were here.

igo THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
And among the factors of our earthly happi

chief
ness, that which binds together, preserves, purifies,
strengthens the rest, is God Himself dwelling in us
and in all around us, revealed to us in His works,
communing with us in our inmost heart and con
science, imparting His light to our mind, His
warmth to our heart, filling with peace and glad
ness those souls who willingly seek for Him with
open ear and eye, and who most surely find Him
far nearer than they ever dreamt. Take sin and its
consequences away, and earth were indeed such a
Paradise as might make us to cry out :
"
It is good
Yet it would be but the vestibule
"
for us to be here !
of Heaven shadow of the substance.

;
the
At timesmay seem to us that we desire nothing
it
but rest, the mere cessation of toil and pain, of

sorrow and temptation, the mere "not-being" of
annihilation. Millions profess with their lips that
to desire is to suffer that to be, is to desire
;
that ;
it alone by not-being that we can escape from

is
suffering that our wisest desire is to cease to desire

;
and to be merged once more into

to cease to be ;
the calm bosom of that nothingness whose surface

is by some malign cause rippled for a moment and
disturbed by our individuality and existence.
They do not discern that desire is woven of a
double strand, namely, the love of an absent object,
together with a sense of need, the former pleasur
able, the latter painful ; or that desire makes not
only for the cessation of the sense of pain, but
principally for the fulfilment of love in the joy of
possession and attainment.
If we desire the absence of pain, it not this

is
mere negation which attracts us. We cannot be

attracted by nothing. The full object of our hope
is our conscious, existing self in a state of freedom
from pain. Even the unbelieving suicide is deluded
by the imagination that he will be conscious of his
deliverance from suffering, though his intellect may
reject the doctrine of immortality. We cannot then
arouse in ourselves a longing for Heaven by the mere
prospect of negative rest, of no more death nor sorrow
nor pain, but only by the prospect of a life immeasur
ably fuller and more lovable than this life would be
were once more transfigured into Paradise, and

it
every weed and bramble of sin plucked up and

destroyed. Even our present narrow, humble mode
of existence is at times very sweet to us, when the
removal of some passing bitterness has made us
realize the blessing which before we unconsciously
enjoyed. If, its lower phases, a painless
then, in
lifecan be so longed for, how much more the highest
plenitude of being of which we are capable ?
Lastly, Heaven is described in our liturgy as
"
a
place of refreshment and of light and of peace;"
which again must be understood as telling us both
what it is not, and what it is. In this world God tries
His saints in the fire of tribulation, temptation, per

secution, even as gold is tried in the furnace. The
noon-day sun scorches them, and the heat stifles
and oppresses them. They are athirst with their
battles and labours, with loss of blood. But there
"the Lamb that is in their midst shall shepherd
them, and lead them by the living water-springs,"
i 92 THE LIFE EVERLASTING.
pure river of the water of life, clear as

"
by that
crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of
the Lamb."
Here they are led blindfold by the hand of faith,

or they see aught, it is by the flickering, uncertain
if
light of reason their eyes are wearied and dim,

;
straining through the gloom, and watching for the

morning which seems so long in coming. God s
ways are so puzzling, so mysterious, so incalculable,
fooling our presumption the moment we pretend to
have discovered their law. Here we can but cry out
in "How incomprehensible are His
our humility:
judgments and His ways past finding out." But
there the weary mind will at last repose in the full
clear light of truth, and the doubts and difficulties
will be forgotten, as the cloudlets that flecked the
sky of a day long past. And if there is laughter in

Heaven, it will be at the guesses and conjectures
and vain theorizings of our child-life on earth, as now
we laugh at the fancies of our early years. There
city shall need no sun nor moon to enlighten
"the
no created or reflected light; "for the bright

it,"
ness of God hath illumined it and the Lamb is the

Light thereof."
Here there is unending war : war wdth oneself,

with the world, with the powers of darkness Militia :
vita hominis super terrain. Never art thou secure "
in this life," says a Kempis, "but while thou livest

thou wilt need thy spiritual armour for thou art ;
in the midst of enemies, and art assailed on the right

hand and on the left." But there, there shall be
peace at last : Pax solida ; pax imperturbabilis et
secura; pax intus et foris ; pax ex omnis parti fir ma

Solid peace, unshaken and unshakable, firm on
"
every side, within and without."
place of refreshment, of light, and of peace

"
"A
and why ? Because it is the place of God, who is

at once our Rest and Refreshment, our Light, our
Peace because it is the home of our Father who is
;
in Heaven, and who is Himself our Heaven Ubi tu, :
ibi ccelum, atque ibi mors et in/emus ubi tu non es
Where God is, there is Heaven. Where God is

"
not, there is Death and Hell."
And so we return to the starting-point, to

the First Principle and Foundation, to the truth
that man is created, not for earth, but for Heaven ;
not for time, but for Eternity ; not for himself, but
forAnother; not for the creature, but for the Creator.
"Thou hast made us for Thyself," says Augustine.
Thou hast made God, our first Beginning.
us"
"
For Thyself "God, our last End.

"And our heart can find no rest till it rest in
Thee."
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
Ernnt sicut angeli Dei in ccelo.
"They shall be as the angels of God in Heaven."
St. Matt. xxii. 30.
IT may be safely asserted that Catholic Christianity

has developed the idea of the virtue of purity and
emphasized its importance, to a degree previously
unknown the world, and hardly now known
to
outside the limit of the Church s influence. Within
those limits, no doubt, are included many non-
Catholic Christians, and perhaps many whose
Christianity has been puzzled out of them, but
who still retain a practical veneration for its
moral ideas and are unconsciously imbued with

its instincts.
No doubt the intensity of the stress which the

Church lays upon this virtue finds its justification
in some of the deepest mysteries of faith. For
granted that impurity is a violation of the natural
dignity of man, it follows that every addition to
man s spiritual elevation increases the malice of
any act of defilement or profanation. Thus when

St.Paul says Lie not one to another, for ye are
:
"
members one of another," he does not mean to

give the ethical reason against lying, but he supposes
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE, I 95
the malice of falsehood to be admitted on all hands,

and adds a supernatural reason which makes it
more odious among those who are united by special
ties of fidelity as members of one
mystical body.
In like manner, Christian doctrine takes for
granted
that the law of reason condemns all impurity, and
then adds to the prohibition of reason other motives
and sanctions drawn from revelation alone.
Still it must be confessed that, as in other
matters of natural religion and morals, so more
especially in this, revelation has helped reason by
way of suggestion. A passage in some foreign
language may be utterly beyond our comprehension
and seem to us hopelessly tangled and and
faulty,
yet a glance at a translation puts everything in its
right place and proves the confusion to have been
purely subjective. So the revelation of natural
truths enables us to see them by the light of reason
paradoxical as it may sound ; or, if we saw them
at all before, to see them now more clearly, to hold
to them more
firmly, and to penetrate to their further
consequences. Besides, what would with difficulty
have been within the grasp of the talented, leisured,
industrious few, is now by revelation made "
current
and the abiding heritage of all.
"
coin
If then, remaining within the purely ethical
order, we seem
some points to find but a frail
in
support for the bold teaching and instincts of the

Catholic Church in this matter of
purity, it need not
surprise us, since we find a like difficulty in justifying
many of our other natural moral instincts and
beliefs which we hold to none the less firmly, knowing
I 96 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
well thatmore things are reasonable than reason can

analyze or set out in form.
Yet there is hardly any point of the Catholic
doctrine of purity, which mere reason does not to
some extent bear out, while in no point can it be
shown to be contrary to reason.
Before, however, examining the rational founda
tions upon which this body of teaching rests, we
may give a brief glance at the buttresses and supports
it receives from faith and revelation.
If the very inclinations of sensuality, which are
natural to man
regarded physiologically, are in the
present order a fruit of original sin, then whatever
natural unseemliness or disorder there may be in
them is augmented and aggravated in so far as they
are doubly against the Divine will. suppose, We
for the present, that man advances from imperfec
tion to perfection, and that since he rightly strives
to obtain complete control over his passions, he
cannot fail to regard their insubordination as a
misfortune, as a moral disorder or disease some
thing to be eradicated and overcome, something
which lowers him to the "
ape and tiger

"
level.
Remaining merely in the natural order, our

lack of perfect self-control in this matter is against
our final dignity, i.e., against the ideal which reason
bids us strive to realize. But according to Catholic
doctrine, Adam was
created with perfect and preter
natural self-control in this matter starting, so to
utmost endeavour. This
say, at the goal of nature s
was, of course, an altogether preternatural endow
ment, as much so as was the infusion of that know-
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 197
ledge and culture towards which he would otherwise

have climbed laboriously and never so effectually.
That the race in its representative and head forfeited
this preternatural gift by sin, makes that a
penal
privation which otherwise had been only a natural
negation. Sensuality is, therefore, not only contrary
toman s natural final perfection, but also to what
" "
God intended him to be in the present order. He

raised us to better things, above our nature, and our
present humiliation is culpable, not indeed through the
fault of the individual, but through the fault of the
race. This makes insubordination of the passions
all
irregular by a new title, that is, as a disturbance, not

only of the natural, but of the supernatural order.
The passions being at least indirectly under our
free control, their irregularity is not
merely a physical,
but a moral infirmity. The cardinal virtues of Tem
perance and Fortitude are in some way defective
until they have extended from the
higher will into
the emotional faculties which it is their office to
control. However inculpable, the insubordination
of the lower to the higher will partakes of the nature
of vice, and is a disposition towards evil. As far
(and no further) as the behaviour of our passions is
not determined by necessary causes, but is deter-
minable by our free choice, just so far is their rebel
lion a vice, whether
culpable or inculpable, whether
resulting from negligence or preceding it. Sensuality
is, in the present order, not
merely a penalty, like
sickness or death, but an ethical blemish which
cannot be acquiesced in without fault.
Again, the Catholic doctrine of grace, which is
ig8 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
declared either to be or to involve a real mystical

indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the soul, and
thereby in the body of the unfallen Christian, makes
every defilement of that temple in some sense sacri
legious.
"
Know you says St. Paul, that your

not,"
"
members are the temple of the Holy Ghost who

is in you ?
" "
Whoso defileth God s temple, him

will God destroy."
As in the building of Solomon s
temple, reverence for the sanctuary that was to be,
forbade the noise of axe or hammer, and required
the stones to be cut elsewhere, and thence taken
and set silently in their destined places, so the
tumult of unruly passions, even where blameless, is
unfitting in the sanctuary of a far higher indwelling,
in the soul which is a consort of the Divine Nature ;
which lives and breathes with a Divine Life. It was

this sense of fitness which secured for Adam the gift
"
"
of perfect self-control or integrity (as it is called) ;

and if it has not been restored to us by redemption,
it is only because our redemption is as yet but
imperfect, and remains to be perfected at the resur

rection in the glorification of the body of our
"
Behold, now are we the sons of

"
humiliation."
God," i.e., in some true but inchoative sense, "but it
doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know

that when He shall appear we shall be like Him."
1
If the sanctity of this spiritual temple is in some

sense marred by even involuntary irregularity in the
passions, much more real is its violation when the
will approves and rests in such an unbefitting state
of things, or encourages it, or brings it about.
1
i St. iii. 2.
John
Another aspect of the sacredness of the Christian s

body is presented in the doctrine of Christ s
Mystical Body, of which we are members. Our
union with Him, and with one another, is not
merely the moral union of any body-corporate, but
a real though mystical union One Body and One :
"
Spirit."
As the act of the member is ascribed to
the whole body, so the sinful actions of Christians
bring a sort of extrinsic disgrace upon Christ and
His Saints, upon the family to which they belong
by a tie far closer than blood. Further, as subject
to the Head, the member is not sui juris, is not its
own, but Christ s. Hence St. Paul argues,
"
Shall I
take the members of Christ and make them members
of an harlot ? God forbid !
"
Closely allied with the same mystery is the

dogma concerning Christ s Eucharistic or Sacra
mental Body, by every participation whereof, the
body and soul of the Christian are mystically trans
muted and in some sense made conspecific with the
glorified Body and Soul of God Incarnate. So
much so that by each sacramental Communion our
body acquires, if not a physical, at least a moral
exigency of deliverance from perpetual corruption.
For it shares in some degree His sanctity of whom
it is written : Thou wilt not leave My Soul in
"
Hell, nor wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see

corruption."
This belief in the future destiny of matter in
general, and of the Christian s body in particular,
to a share in the final glory of creation to which it
has ministered, both in the order of nature and of
THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
grace, is at the root of Catholic reverence for the

remains of the dead, for the relics of the saints, and
for bodily purity and
integrity.
Finally, the union of the Divinity, as it were by
intermarriage, to the human family has raised our
race, as a whole, above the dignity of the highest
angelic orders, even as the low-born can be lifted
above their social superiors by union with a prince
of the blood-royal. He never took to Himself
"
the angels, but He took the seed of Abraham."
Although this union is not so close as that which

binds together the members of His Mystical Body,
still it is a moral tie such as holds one tribe or
people together by community of blood. The Son

of God is reckoned in the census of humanity, but
not in that of the angels, who count it an honour to
minister to the fellow-mortals of the Incarnate God.
Hence the King of men is a fortiori the King of the
angels,and Mary is the angels queen, and Gabriel
her minister and messenger. All this imparts a
new dignity to every man as such, and adds a new
indignity to every impurity, voluntary or even in
voluntary.
All these motives, which are at the root of the
intense stress which the Church lays upon the virtue
of purity, rest on revealed dogma. They are non
existent for those who do not accept these dogmas,
i.e., not only for non-Christians, but to a great
extent for non-Catholic Christians, amongst whom
as much of Catholic feeling as survives is to be
ascribed to sentiments which linger on after their
reasonable basis is gone.
Yet throughout we have been supposing that,

viewed merely in the light of reason, impurity is an
indignity, a violation of man s spiritual nature. This
given, then whatever adds to man s dignity, aggra
vates the offence. Let us, then, see what sound
reason tells us on the point.
By a certain world-old philosophy which has
gone under various names in various times and
places, purity has been assailed on ostensibly
speculative grounds. The difficulty of the virtue
has at all times driven men to invent and to
embrace theory which will
a square with their
inclination and practice for no ; man likes to admit
openly to others that he lives in defiance of reason,
nor will he care, as a rule, to admit it to himself.
Sometimes this philosophy strives to show that
purity is at most a social virtue, a matter of con
vention and custom and this doctrine is more

;
dangerous when with it is held that other which
regards society itself as in no sense natural or

demanded by reason, but the artificial creation of
formal compact or tolerated custom. At other
times it proclaims more boldly that purity is a
moral impossibility, that it is a violation of nature,
against our first instincts, and in no way obligatory.
We have a growing school of modern after- "
Christians," as they have been called, which raves
against all restraint of concupiscence as a supersti

tion of priestcraft.
Modesty was only made for those who have

"
no beauty. It is an invention of the modern world ;
the child of the Christian contempt for form and

202 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
matter. . . . O
on apurity, plant of bitterness, born
blood-soaked and whose degenerate and sickly
soil,
blossom expands with difficulty in the dank shade
of cloisters, under a chill baptismal rain rose ;
without scent, and spiked all round with thorns [

. .The ancient world knew thee not, O
. sterile
flower ... In that vigorous and healthy

!
society
they would have spurned thee under foot dis
dainfully !"
1
The writer is modern, but his sentiment is as
ancient as the Fall. It is but the utterance of that
paganism which is latent, like a seed of death,
in every human
and only awaits favourable heart,
climate and environment to germinate and fructify.
From the very first the appeal is couched in the
same specious form. The fruit is fair to the eye,
pleasant to taste, gratifying to curiosity, evidently
devised by nature for our enjoyment and the doubt ;
arises,
"
Hath God said ye shall surely die ?

"
And
then comes the conclusion,
"
Ye shall not surely

die."
"
The are told, is the voice

voice of we
Nature,"
"
of God. In other see how promiscuous animals we

obedience to their impulses leads to no disastrous
results. Society and the family are violent and
artificial institutions, and can bind our conduct
only so far as they can force it. Outside that limit
there is complete moral liberty. Further, is it not
more evident daily that the distance between man
and brute is one of degree, not of kind a tenet
which justifies to some extent his claim for equal
1
Theophile Gautier.
liberty."
No doubt evolutionary Utilitarianism would
prohibit any excesses that might lead to the
deterioration of the human type in future ages ;
but such a sanction would avail little, under pressure
of temptation, with the majority, who care nothing
for the state of posterity at so remotely distant a
period, especially when the effect of a single excess

is so infmitesimally insignificant in the result.
That grosser hedonistic reasoning is based

all
on a low and inadequate view of human nature, is

abundantly plain. If man differs from the brute
only in the higher and more effectual development
of his senses, we must allow that the final happiness
to which those senses minister is of a like kind with
theirs. If, on the other hand, we hold that evolu
tionist philosophy has not lessened human dignity,

but has only raised that of non-human animals,
conceding to them a germinal intellect, reason, con
science, then the same reasons which will presently
force us to condemn sensuality in man, will equally
compel us to condemn it in them, unless we agree

with a speaker at the Anglican Church Congress in
1896, who explains that sin in its essence is
simply an anachronism, i.e., the abnormal survival

of a habit which was laudable in our savage
or brutal ancestors, but which is old-fashioned and
out of date in modern man. Evolutionists and
zoophilists cannot play fast and loose with common
sense in these matters. Ifwe credit brutes with
moral virtues, we must blame them for their vices,
or else frankly come forward as determinists, and
deny imputability all round. This latter would be to
2 o4 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
deny virtue and vice in any sense hitherto accepted

by the world for who would call strength, health,
;
beauty, or temperament, virtues, or their contraries

vices ?
We
can accept only that anthropology according
to which man is of two distinct elements one, ;
higher and spiritual, the other, lower and animal

the lower being obviously ministerial and organic to
the higher not, however, merely an instrument, but
;
also a secondary partner in a common interest.
Against the view, favoured by dualist religions,

which regards the body as the prison-house of a
fallen spirit, or as the creation of some malign
power hostile to light and truth, something to be

detested and destroyed, the simple philosophy of
the Church (which is that of common sense and
common language) shows us that the senses feed the
intellect and supply it with the raw fabric of its
ideas; that through them alone is the soul put en

rapport with that revelation of truth which
God s
finger has traced on the face of nature that ;

man s
passions and emotions are, as it were, so much rough

material to be hewn and shaped into conformity
with the pattern of reason, with the ideal that nature
hints at and strives with trembling hand to realize.
Of themselves, these impulses are blind erratic forces
in some ways, but they can be trained to run in
harness, and to bear man onward to his self-chosen
mark, instead of running off with him.

But man has his period of unreasoning infancy,
and throughout life there are innumerable daily
crises and intervals where reason is either in
abeyance, or only free to attend to one of a crowd

of simultaneous urgencies. Then it is that instincts
and habits, natural or acquired, play an important
part in his life, even as they play the entire part in
the life of unreasoning animals.
Still instincts and habits, like all general legis
lation, fail in particulars, though their average result

is good. These failures man can supplement by the
adapting power of reason and by the free modifi
cation and habits. And this more
of his tastes
especially when such impulses urge him towards
his animal and bodily interests, to the disregard of
his higher and adequately conceived good. Man,
alone of animals, knows himself reflexly, knows
his own double nature, his final perfection, his
Creator and Owner. He alone can enter into
conscious sympathy with the plans of his Maker.
Other creatures are evolved man is self-evolving,
;
free to co-operate or to resist. It is the very nature

of his probation to see whether he will choose to
act as man, bringing out fully all that specifies him
and distances him from the brute. His final per
fection is intellectual and moral before all things.
Animal nature is fully evolved on the completion of
adolescence, but man s spiritual nature is unde
veloped for years, and at best only partially advanced
towards an ever-receding goal of possible perfection.
In a certain wide sense of the word we might
say that the distinctive perfection or virtue of a
human being, man or woman, is courage that it :
is in a man what physical strength or brute force

is in a horse or a lion. Courage is moral strength
2 o6 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
or will-force, a power of resisting the continual

straining of pleasure and pain against the law of
the Divine will, and against the claims of conscience.
Those who lack this power are quickly dehumanized
and degraded, being enslaved to sensuality or to vain
glory, or to some other tyranny. Many counterfeits
pass for courage, as, for example, a certain insensi
bility to bodily pains and pleasures on the part of
those whose nerves are coarse-fibred and whose
imagination is dull and sluggish ;
or a natural in
difference to the praise and censure of others on the
part of those who are solitary and self-centered and

deficient in that desire for the esteem and affection of
others which, however hurtful when abused, is one of
the noblest and most helpful of the instincts God has
planted in our hearts. Again, there are some whose
affections are by nature, and still more
feeble
enfeebled by habitual selfishness, and who are conse
quently free from the temptation of any violent love
or hatred or grief or fear. If, through mere insensi
bility of these kinds, men seem to endure great pains

or humiliations or sorrows or else to forego great
pleasures and honours and joys, this is but a counter

feit courage. Nor again is itcourage when one goes
out to meet danger full of self-confidence and with
a moral certainty of victory and escape, as when
Goliath came forth against David nor when through ;
thoughtlessness or excitement or inexperience, one

under-estimates the risk to be encountered. There
is but littlecourage in hot blood, unless we are
to credit wild bulls with courage, nor does all
that passes for bravery on the battlefield deserve to
be confounded with that rare moral force which it

would be a miracle to find widely distributed in such
a chance assortment of men. To fear nothing,"
"
says a recent writer, and face danger, is the

"
courage of a noble animal to be afraid yet to go

;
1
through to the end, is the courage of a man."
At times men will face present pain simply in
order to escape far greater pain of the same kind ;
they will allow a tooth to be drawn or a limb to be
cut off, counting it good economy of suffering in the
long run. This may be excellent good sense, and
akin to courage, but it is not true courage. A poor
timid bird will often turn desperate and fight for its
life with what might seem to be courage, but is only
the very pressure of extreme fright. The miser will

go far beyond many a saint in his austerities and
self-denials, not because he is master of himself, but
because he is and the courtier
the slave of avarice ;
will brook
many an indignity and bitter humiliation,
not because he is master of his resentment, but
because he is the slave of ambition. And so in a
thousand ways men who are by no means insensible
to suffering will deliberately endure pain and con
tempt and annoyance in order to avoid what they

consider greater evils, or to secure greater advan
tages. Their action in so doing is usually prudent
and justifiable, and has certain elements of true
courage in it, since it is governed by foresight and
reason, and not merely by the pressure of present
feeling. But courage in the true sense requires that
we should endure or abstain, not for any kind of
1
Man. By Lilian Quiller Couch.
motive whatever, but sake of that highest for the
spiritual good to which alone

our subjection as
reasonable beings is due or permissible for the sake, ;
that is, of principle, of truth and right and justice,

of God s cause or still better, for the sake of God
;
Himself, explicitly known and loved and reverenced.

Non passio, says Augustine, sed causa facit martyr em
It is not suffering, but suffering for a good cause,
"
that makes a martyr."
It is in such suffering that man fully realizes
himself and attains the summit of his glory; as
indeed we see in the great Archetype of humanity

towhom Pilate, unconsciously prophetic, pointed as
He stood before the multitude, scourged, mocked,
and rejected for the cause of God, and said Ecce
Homo Behold the Man!" He truly was not
insensible to pain, contempt, or grief, whose body
and soul were framed and devised by Divine Wisdom
to be the instruments of that suffering which was to
redeem the world, and who went forth to His Passion
knowing all things that were to come upon Him,"
"
and yet was silent as a sheep before its shearers

calm with seeming apathy, as if He were deaf, hard,
and senseless so that the governor wondered
"
exceedingly."
As it behoved Him to suffer and so to enter into
His glory, so it is in the act of suffering for God,
or for God s cause, that every man reachest his
best and enters into his glory as man. Because
Christ was strong to suffer and to die, therefore were
all things put under His feet and so far as we are ;
filled with a like strength are we invincible against

THE ANGELIC VIRTUE. 2og
those who
shrink from pain as the worst of evils.
Hence said that the blood of the
it is
martyrs is the
seed of the Church, and she, who knows the secret
of the Crucifix, will ever have
among her children
those whose faith in the unseen
good, will "overcome
the world
"
by suffering.
The Church, taught by Christ, bids us acquiesce
in the truth that this world
is not our
home, but our
school; that it is
designed to school us in that
which is best among our capacities, namely, in
courage, in an heroic endurance of
suffering for
the sake of God and God s cause. For in this our
very highest capability is exerted and strengthened
and perfected.
Hence it follows that manhood is most pro
perly manifested in the mastery of impulse. We
stigmatize one who is deficient in self-mastery as
weak, or wanting in that moral strength which is
to man what bone and sinew are to the
mere
animal. The vituperatives
"effeminate," "childish,"
"savage," "brutal," all confess the same conception

of man s nature, and of God s intention. God is
therefore at once the author and
moving force of
our animal impulses, and of the dictate of
reason
which bids us control them. He us with
supplies
the task, and with the instruments
by which it is
to be accomplished. It would be indeed a
difficulty
were He the author of two
contrary tendencies,
unless, as is the case, He willed one to
prevail, and
made provision its prevalence. Nor is He
for
strictly the author,

but rather the permitter, of the
contrariety; nor does He will the useful force of
o
passion to be wasted
and extinguished, but to be
used and applied in due place and season.
Itthen, precisely as being unworthy of true
is,
manhood, and of our nature adequately regarded,

that we feel moral shame over any exhibition of
control is due and
imperfect self-control where such
possible. We
blush to be detected in cowardice,
meanness, selfishness, curiosity. Pro
greediness,
fligates who brag most shamelessly of their vices,
always represent them as proofs of

their bravery,
manliness, independence of superstition, of religious

fear, of human respect, but
never like to allow their
sheer weakness and inability to conquer them.
The shame that we feel at our subjection to
needs and infirmities,
purely involuntary animal
which neither are, nor can be under our control, is
moral shame as of something whose
"
no sense
"
in
deformity is
imputable. And the same is to be said
of our shame about merely conventional disgraces,
like poverty, ill-birth, breaches of etiquette. Unruly
passions, on the other hand, even if not a self-
chosen or a self-permitted deformity, are a remedi
able defect which may not be complacently tolerated.
Now, what is controllable impulses is
true of all
more emphatically true of that which is chief among

them, in so far as it concerns that animal function
whose results are of the greatest moment both to
individual and to social life namely, the multiplying
of human beings, the bringing of new personalities
If it is a momentous
on to the stage of human life.
thing for any man to usurp the authority of God,
and by the crime of murder to cut short the allotted
space of a human life, surely the "to be or not to

be of unborn personalities is a question of
"
great
consequence, where it behoves man, with whom its
decision rests, to be fully master of himself. If it
is bestial that he should be so enslaved
by greedi
ness as to endanger his own health, what can be
said of his slavery to an appetite
fraught with so much
more consequence to others ? In this matter to be
determined, like a brute, by pleasure alone, is surely
the most extreme irregularity, and to
approve and
consent to such irregularity is, in the light of mere
reason, the gravest immorality. Proportional, then,

to the gravity of the end is man s
obligation of
holding this instinct well in hand.
Still, according to the insistence she places on
the preservation of the species, Nature (i.e., God in
nature) has made this instinct the strongest of all.
Hence, while the mastery of it is most necessary,
it is also most difficult, and this it is that makes
chastity the very crown and seal of perfected man
hood.
Theusual effects, physical and moral, of sensual
indulgence on individuals and on society at large,
are sufficient indication of the sentence which
outraged nature passes on such vice, nor need we

amplify so disagreeable a topic. When man once
makes carnal pleasure an end in itself, reason enables
him to devise and organize a thousand
ways of
procuring and multiplying it which are inaccessible
to unreasoning animals. He sinks not merely to their
level, but indefinitely lower.
The physical and moral degradation which
results, not indeed from any one act, but from single
acts multiplied like plague-spots, is enough of itself
to warrant a precept of nature against any exception
to their universal prohibition thus adding a grave
;
extrinsic malice to the already grave intrinsic malice

of any single act.
In fine, the root-malice of impurity, viewed in
the mere light of reason, lies in the fact that
God has given us a certain very imperative
instinct, a certain clear purpose of the most
for
vitally momentous consequence.

He intends to
prove and perfect us as reasonable beings
in this
matter, as in many others, that we may freely choose

to resist this impulse where it is contrary to His
declared purpose, and use it where He wills us to
use it, and in the same way as He wills it. That
He wills no use of it outside wedlock is a further
to the present dis
question, and does not belong
cussion, which is general.
Any impulse to do what is irregular is itself
irregular, and cannot be approved

or encouraged
by reason. If murder is wrong, I may not en

courage a tendency to murder. If I may not take
my neighbour s property, I may not wilfully long
for it. So every impulse towards sensual satisfaction
which would be unlawful, is naturally un
itself
lawful. Man is under a natural obligation of tending

towards the perfect control of every controllable
impulse hence even inculpable rebellions should
;
displease him as being opposed to his final perfection,

i.e., to that ideal which
he should aim it. They
are not matter for blame, but for regret; but to
approve them or not to regret them would be

blameworthy. My temper may be quite beyond
my present control, so that I am free of all self-
reproach but I may not acquiesce in this state of
;
things as long as there is room for further self-

mastery. Thus, reason is in sympathy with the
Church s high esteem of what we might call effectual
purity, as opposed to that which merely exists in
firm will and purpose as well as with her more
;
adequate view of human nature and human virtue,

each composed of two elements, internal and external,
soul and body, neither perfect without the other,
yet the soul absolutely self-standing,
self-sufficing,
while the body apart from it is wholly valueless.
Temperance in will and purpose is compatible
with dipsomania; fortitude with physical nervous
ness and timidity although they lack their proper
embodiment and expression, since they have not
realized that effect which of their own nature
they
tend to realize in normal circumstances.
Again,
there a mere placidity of physical temperament
is
that simulates peacefulness, an

insensibility which
passes as continence, a general negation of passion
which looks like self -conquest ; but these are
nothing worth virtues in no sense of the word.
:
The and perfect virtue is that which is measured

full
and duly conceived by reason, enforced by the will,

and gradually conformed to by the passions. It is
normally the result of industry.
The efforts of the will may be partly or wholly
ineffectual, owing to obstinacy of the natural tem
perament ; and in this case the defect is not morally
2i 4 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
one
imputable or blamable, but only regrettable;
not be of for it is an infirmity dis
may glad it,
honouring our human dignity, a matter of humili

ation, a defacing of God s image. Given, in two
internal virtue, the addition of the
cases, equal
external virtue in one adds a certain moral dignity
or ornament which the other has not. To have it
in the one case, to lack in the other, may not be
it
nor as demerit although

imputable, either as merit ;
to have it may be a means of merit, and to lack it,

a safeguard of humility and therefore indirectly a
means of greater merit.
So with regard to that perfect immunity, not
merely from voluntary faults against chastity, but
even from all natural irregularities which the Church
bids us pray for. It is not a matter of merit so
much as of spiritual dignity. We should regret
(not blame ourselves for) every

want of that perfect
self-control which is the final dignity after which

reason should strive, and the want of which is
with respect to
contrary to God s first intention
the children of Adam and the brethren of Christ.
We should regret it out of reverence to God s image
which it is our duty to educe and perfect in ourselves ;
out of reverence to this nature which the Eternal

was wedded to Himself in unity of Person out of ;
reverence to that Eucharistic Flesh and Blood which

we feed on; out of reverence to our own flesh and
blood rendered conspecific with it by reiterated
Communions and destined to a like glorification out ;
of reverence to the indwelling Spirit whose temples

we are out of reverence to the Mystical Body of
;
which we are members, and to Christ its Head, and

to Mary and to all the saints our fellow-members,
who share our honour or dishonour.
Hence, cczteris paribus, the Church prefers, not
as more meritorious, but as spiritually more exalted,
the condition of those who are thus exempt. Not
that she prizes physical impotence or defect of
passion, as possessing any beauty in the spiritual
or moral order, but rather full passions and warm
affections controlled and conquered by an over
mastering passion of Divine love. This mastery of

the strong man by the stronger is in the case of
some saints the result of a suddenly infused strength
of charity; in most, it is of slower growth. We
should indeed do ill to conceive it as a privation
of any strength or fulness of vitality, an emascu
lation of character inany sense. Mere immunity,
without a will firm enough to resist all rebellion,
would be only material purity; but where the
immunity is due to a continual overmastering of
the lower impulses by the higher, too firm and
strong to be sensible of any difficulty or resistance,
we are in the presence of heroic and almost super
human virtue.
Closely connected with this high estimate of

effectual purity is the value the Church sets on
celibacy and virginity. It is no mere economical
or prudential motive that binds her priesthood to
chastity, but a sense of the spiritual dignity befitting

those who minister at the altar of the Virgin-born
and dispense the Bread of Angels to others. It is
strange how any school of Christianity can fail
2i 6 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
to see the high esteem set upon bodily virginity by

our Saviour, and how those who were closest to
Him were graced by this ornament His Mother, :
His precursor, His foster-father, His bosom friend,

His heavenly bodyguard. Apart from this mystical
reason, there is also a reason which is eminently
practical, namely, the unfitness of a married clergy
to preach to others a continence and self-restraint
which they have little or no occasion to practise
Keep up Don t give in they seem
"
themselves. "
! !
to cry to the many who

are struggling in billows,
while they themselves are enjoying the comparative
security of a life-boat. With her eyes wide open
to all the sin and
sacrilege that celibacy has
occasioned and yet occasion, the Church insists
may
upon it for the sake of a greater good which im
measurably outbalances all that evil, for the sake

of the encouragement of those millions upon whom
restraint is for one reason or another incumbent,
whether for a time or continually, and that, often
in the very years when it is most difficult. Again,
she knows well that the man who fights, even
though he fall from time to time, gives more glory
to God than he who sits at home. She knows that
marriage does not create purity or the power of
restraint where it did not exist before, and that to
the impure and incontinent its liberty is rarely
sufficient, while the transgression of its restraints
is a far deadlier sin than a celibate is capable of.
Reason tells us that if the unruliness of any

controllable appetite is a grave disorder, far more
is the unruliness of sensual desire, so momentous in
its consequences. Even the first impulse to so

grave a disorder cannot be regarded as a slight
irregularity. This, again, bears out Catholic teach
ing to the effect that, given full advertence and
self-control, no fault in this matter is light, although
there are various degrees of gravity. Here the
severity of the Church s teaching seems at first sight
excessive for ;
indeed any
it comes to this, that
deliberate and direct concession to sensual incli
nation, however slight, whether in thought or deed,
is grievously sinful. It must, however, be fully
deliberate, a condition which supposes perfect

advertence both to what is being done or thought
about, and to the gravely sinful character of such
thoughts or actions and also, perfect self-control,
;
so that the thought or act is in no way automatic

or involuntary. These conditions are, of course,
very frequently absent in the first beginnings of
sensual rebellion. Again, the concession must be
direct, that must have sensual gratification for
is, it
its motive, and not some other

necessary end which
would perhaps justify the toleration under protest of
an involuntary gratification.
But the practical wisdom of the Church s severity
in regarding the slightest direct and deliberate con
cession as grievous, is evident when we reflect that
here, as in some other matters, a slight concession,
far from mitigating irregular desire, increases it ;
and if the first impulse is not resisted, it is inde

finitely less likely that the second will be. In fact
it is like starting a boulder rolling down a hill,
which becomes more hopelessly unmanageable at
2 i8 THE ANGELIC VIRTUE.
every bound. It is the failure to realize this law,

or to accept it in faith from the experience and
wisdom of the Church, that lies at the root of so
much difficulty in this matter.
Here indeed the rule is the same for all, for
those who walk by the commandments or by the
counsels. But when it is a question of justifiable
occasions of involuntary gratification, there is a
wide range between the maximum and the minimum
of liberty, which leaves room for many refinements
of purity that are of counsel and not of command.
There is on the one side a point after which the
pretended justification is inadequate to the
quite
resulting irregularity of which it is the occasion
or indirect cause; on the other, a point beyond
which abstinence from lawful occasions would inter
fere with plain duties or with greater good. As

If thou
"
the counsel of evangelical poverty is :
wilt be perfect, sell all;" that is: Do not ask

how much, but how little may you keep; so the
counsel of purity is, that we should inquire rather
how we may reasonably avoid lawful occasions,
far
than how far we are free to encounter them.
Both these limits, maximum and minimum, are
relative and not absolute; that is, the tempera
ment, circumstances, antecedents, state of life, of
each individual determine for him to what length
he can go one way or the other without a violation
of conscience or an infringement of duty. In
there can be little doubt as to which is
practice
the easier, the safer and more generous course to
adopt or which the Church everywhere encourages
;
and approves, so long as counsel is not confounded

with precept to the hurt of conscience and the
eventual injury of simple purity.
Last of all, reason goes further, and tells us
that if we have anystrong propensityvicious
whose unavoidably occasioned in the
satisfaction is
fulfilment of some imperative duty, we should regard

the circumstance with a certain regret, on account of
the gratification of a mortal enemy. For example,
as a magistrate one may have to condemn his mortal
foe, and thus to gratify his natural vindictiveness ;
or one prone to drunkenness may be ordered spirits
by his doctor. If there is sincere good-will in either
case, the purely involuntary gratification of these
lower propensities will be a matter of regret to the
higher part of our nature. These evil tendencies
are our spiritual foes whom we desire to starve out ;
and therefore in spite of ourselves, we are con

if,
strained to feed them in any way and so put off the

date of their extermination, we shall hardly be
pleased.
Thus even in the subtlest points we find reason
running parallel with the instincts and intuitions

of the Catholic religion touching the angelic virtue,
and confessing that God is just, and His judgments
are right :
Justus es, Domine, et rectum judicium tuum.
A GREAT MYSTERY.
"
A help, meet for him."
WE are told in the Book of Genesis that God

created man and fashioned him to His own image
and likeness, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life ;
that He created him to have dominion
over the other creatures on the face of the earth,
all
to use them in the carrying out of his own work

and end ; that in this especially man differed from
the brute animals, that by reason of his power of
thinking and choosing, he had dominion not only
over them, but over himself, over his feelings, his
passions, his instincts he was not to be swayed ;
by them, or carried along helplessly and thrown,

as an unskilled rider by a spirited horse, but
to make them serve him and carry him wherever
and however, as long, and as far as he should judge
right. And if in respect to his passions and appetites
he is in authority, with respect to God he is
under authority, God saying to him, as he to
Go, and he goeth come, and he
"
his passions, ;
cometh do this, and he doth

;
Man was it."
created to be God s absolute slave and servant, to

do God s will and God s work and nothing else, and
A GREAT MYSTERY. 221
therein to find his perfection while every other

;
creature then created, was created to be man s

absolute slave and servant, to help him in the per
formance of this work. What, then, was this work?
To prepare himself here in order to live hereafter
with God for ever, to see Him face to face; to know
as God knows, to love as God loves to be happy ;
with God s own happiness.

Fresh from God s moulding hand, man looked
round upon creation, upon the innumerable helps
that God s bounty had provided for him, sun and
moon and stars, earth and ocean, mountains and
valleys, springs and streams, glades, meadows and
forests, trees and flowers, beasts, birds and fishes,
all praising God in chorus, "telling His glory,
showing His handiwork," speaking of His goodness,
wisdom, and power; helping man to know Him,

and, knowing, to love Him with his whole heart,
and whole mind, and whole soul, and whole strength.
And yet, gazing round upon all these helps, man
felt helpless, for there was no
help found meet for
him there were dumb slaves in abundance, but no
;
companion ; servants
by necessity, and not by
choice. things were
"All
put under his feet," but
he had no partner to share his dominion and
sovereignty. He had the power of speech, but none
to speak to; the power of thought, but none to think
with a human heart, but no human object for its
;
affections; helps, therefore, in abundance, but no

help meet for him. Surely it was not good for him
to be alone, neither for body nor for As his
spirit.
body, so neither could his soul increase or fructify
222 A GREAT MYSTERY.
in his helpless and solitary yet God

state. And
created him alone that he
might, as it were,
feel and experience his neediness, that he might
value and reverence the crowning gift of creation,
the highest and noblest that God had yet in store
for him, the only help that was meet for him, that
could deliver him from solitude midst the teeming
lifeand endless stir of the natural world.
Yes, God had withheld the good wine till the last.
And whence is He to fashion this help for man?
Not as Adam was fashioned from the rude dust of
the earth, but from man himself, "bone of his bone
and flesh of his flesh," taken from his very substance,
in a sense his offspring; bound to him
child, his
with all the ties that bind child to parent, and with
others not less close and tender. And so, when
Adam had sought in vain a help meet for him, God
created woman and brought her to him and man ;
said, This is now bone of my bone, flesh of my

"
flesh; she shall be called woman, for that she is

taken out of man for this cause shall a man leave
:
his and mother and cleave to his wife,

father
and they shall be two in one." Two in one one :
perfect being made of two parts. Neither complete

without the other, bodily or spiritually. If, as the
religion of Mahomet teaches, woman s end were but

to help man in the work of perpetuating the race,
then indeed she need not have been spiritually
man s equal God need not, as the Mahometans
;
suppose He did not, have endowed her with an

immortal soul. He might have created her to be
man s abject slave, in no sense his human equal.
But man s work, man s end, is not merely animal,
is not merely to live and multiply. Our mind

refuses to rest in the thought that one gene
ration exists principally for the sake of the next ;
and not primarily for its own sake. Man s chief
and only essential duty, end, and work is to praise,
reverence, and serve the Lord his God, and thereby
to save his soul and it is principally to help him
;
in this spiritual work that woman was created,

and matrimony instituted. In this she could not
help him, were she not destined with him for a
like end were she not capable herself of praising,
;
reverencing, and serving God, and had she not a

soul to save.
How, then, does she help him in this work?
As a wife principally, and then as a mother.
It is needless to point out how imperfect a man s
spiritual education must be, if he lives a life of

complete solitude how many possible virtues must
;
lie dormant and inactive, or simply wither away

for want of exercise. There are recorded cases of
children who have been lost in woods and forests,
and have grown up in the company of wild beasts,
far removed from all human intercourse. And when
they were discovered, they were found to be dumb,

savage, and unreasoning, like the animals among
which they had lived. Now the marriage-bond is
the elementary bond with respect to human society,
and community of life. It is the first, the natural,
the universal and most absolute of all partnerships,
by which two become one. All other bonds and
ties shadow some aspect of this, more or less
imperfectly. The husband and wife are constant

companions, life-long friends. They have not one
or two common interests only, but a thousand ;
and there is hardly a single virtue which is not

needed, which must not be practised and strength
ened, if they are to fulfil their duty by one another
patience, meekness, justice, prudence, fortitude,
self-restraint, generosity, in a word, all manner of
unselfishness.
Nor only as the closest and most intimate of
is it
his companions and friends of his heart that the

wife helps towards the husband s spiritual develop
ment but as being in some sense his moral com
;
plement, even as she is his physical complement

the two dividing the one perfect human character
between them, one abounding where the other is
deficient ;
one strong where the other is weak ;
each soul fitting into the other, supplying its defects,

filling its emptinesses, making with it one perfect
image and likeness of the ideal humanity as conceived

in the mind of God. Only in the one perfect
Exemplar, only in the soul of Christ were all
virtues, graces, and perfections, fully developed,
perfectly balanced and adjusted, justice and mercy,
strength and gentleness, truth and caution, courage
and discretion, energy and patience, generosity and
prudence, liberty and restraint. He alone was
beautiful above the children of men," for all
"
beauty lies in justness of proportion and delicacy

of temper.
But other men, if they are strong, they are often
rough if they are just, they are harsh ; if they are
;
A GREAT MYSTERY.
225
courageous, they are rash if energetic, impatient

;
;
if generous, extravagant. Women, on the other

hand, if they are gentle, merciful, prudent,
patient,
if they abound in tact, delicacy, spiritual-minded-
ness they fail more
;
easily in the rougher, sterner,
and more primitive virtues. It is man and
only in
woman, taken together, that we have the fulness
and perfection of human graces and
virtues; not
merely the diamond in the rough, but set and cut
and polished till all its
brightness gleams out to
perfection. We
all
recognize this when we speak
disapprovingly of a man as womanish or effeminate,
not because he possesses the
special virtues of
womanhood chastity, gentleness, patience, tact,
unselfishness, which would be to his greater honour
and to his discredit, but because he
lacks the
^not
special virtues of manhood. And so a virago or
masculine woman is not a mulier
fortis, a brave, just,
courageous, truth-loving woman, but one who fails
in the graces that are the
peculiar ornament of
womanhood.
Again, as mother of his children, she
helps man,
ncrt only in conceiving, bearing, nursing, and
tending
their bodies; but in
perfecting the of God in
image
their souls, which is as much part of their natural
perfection as the growth and of their
maturing
bodies. Her child is not fully born until it begins
to be born to God, to learn from
her lips to love
and worship its Maker nor is it weaned till
; it has
learned insome way to walk alone and without her
assistance in the of God s commandments..
way
And for this end God has made woman more
more apt in the things of God,

spiritual-minded,
that she might be as naturally adapted for the
nursing, rearing, and

formation of the young soul
as she is for that of the body.
And so precisely because woman
we see that it is
has a soul to save, that she is a help fit and worthy

soul
of man a help in the great work of saving the
;
first of her husband and then of his children ;

and
that marriage, as God intended it, is not merely a
carnal union, but principally a joining of souls;

that its end is not to replenish and overpopulate
1
the with animals more canino, but to fill
earth
Heaven with saints; to multiply bodies for the
sake of souls. And so far we have not been
as a sacrament instituted by
speaking of marriage
Christ but as ordained by God in the beginning,
;
when he created man and sought out help meet "a
for him" work which he had to do, to

in the great
his
praise, reverence, and serve God, and so to save
soul.
n.
"This is a great sacrament: I speak as to Christ and the

Church." Ephes. v.
Every good and perfect says St. James,

"
gift,"
is from above
"
and comes down from the Father of
that is to say, whatever
"
there is good and

Lights ;
perfect in God
s works, whether in the kingdom of
nature or in the kingdom of grace is a shadow, a
of that infinite good-
type, an imperfect semblance,
1
St. Augustine, De bon. vidnit.
A GREAT MYSTERY.
227
ness and perfection, which is God Himself. From

"
Him/ says St. Paul,

"
all fatherhood in Heaven and

earth is named and derived."
The Eternal Father
hood, the Eternal Sonship, the Eternal Generation
is the only good and
perfect Fatherhood, and
Sonship, and Generation of which the natural
;
and human are but distant,

finite, immeasurably
feeble and
faulty imitations and figures; like all
other creatures frail
steps by which our earthly
mind can raise itself up some little
way towards the
infinite and
everlasting archetypes. if we
Similarly,
wish to contemplate the
heavenly type, the per
the
ideal of
fection, marriage, we must raise up
our hearts and gaze
upon the great mystery of
Christ and the Church.
A sacrament, as we
learn, is made up of the
outward sign and the inward
grace signified and
conveyed. If the grace were
signified, but not
conveyed, we should have no true and efficacious
sacrament of the Gospel no
real, though mystical,
;
application of one of the manifold fruits of the

Precious Blood to our souls. In the beginning,
matrimony, as ordained by God, was a sign, as it
is now, of the union
between Christ and His Church ;
of that which was to be the
ideal of the relation
subsisting between man and wife but until it was ;
made a sacrament of the

Church, the marriage
contract was not a means but
only a sign of grace ;
it did not
convey power to the man and wife to
realize and
carry out that ideal, to imitate in their
conduct towards one another the intercourse between
-Christand His Spouse the Church. For as the
22 8 A GREAT MYSTERY.
Holy Eucharist helps us to mature and perfect,

detail after detail, the image of Christ which the
which
Holy Ghost prints on our soul in Baptism, by
Christ is born in us as it helps
;
us to grow up to
the stature of the perfect man in Christ, so the
Sacrament of Holy Matrimony produces in the soul
of the husband a special likeness to Christ as Head
and Husband of the Church; and in the soul of the
wife a special likeness to the Church, as the Bride
of the Lamb and effects between both a mystical
;
and supernatural union in the order of grace, over

and above the moral and physical union of mere
natural, non-Christian marriage a union whose
they shall be two in
"
is given us in the fiat

type
one flesh," whose archetype is the sameness, the
oneness of Christ and His Mystical Body. And
therefore, with St. Paul for our guide, let us look to
Christ and the Church, that we may know better
what the Christian husband and wife ought to be

one to another; what the Sacrament of Matrimony
alone can make them and that, on the condition
of its being well and worthily received, and co
operated with, and followed up.

Let women be subject to their husbands as to
"
the Lord for the husband is the head of the wife,

;
as Christ is the Head. of the Church; for He is the

Saviour of the body. But the Church is subjected
to Christ and women likewise to their husbands in
;
everything. And let husbands love their wives,

even as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself
up her, that He might sanctify her, having
for
purified her with the washing of water in the word,

that He Himself mightpresent her to Himself a

glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any
such thing but that she might be holy and blame
;
less. So ought men to love their own wives even

as their own bodies for he that loveth his wife
;
loveth himself. No man ever yet hated his own

flesh, but nourishes it and cares for it, even as
Christ does the Church ; for we are members of
His body. For this cause shall a man leave his
father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and
they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great

sacrament (but I speak as to Christ and the
Church). But let every one of you in particular
love each his own wife even as himself; and the
wife, in such sort that she fear her husband."
First of all, then, Christ is the Head of the
Church, which His Body and we ourselves are
is ;
the various parts and members and organs, of which

that Mystical Body is made up. And although the
body is subject to the head, and serves the head,
and is ruled by the head, yet the head and body
are not two distinct beings, but parts of one and
the same being each part necessary for the other ;
both necessary for the whole being. So Christ is

greater than the Church, which ministers to Him,
which is ruled by Him, which is His instrument
and servant yet He and His Church are not two
;
distinct beings, but parts of one

mystical whole,
which we sometimes find spoken of indistinctly as
Christ and sometimes as the Church. As the head
needs the body, and the heart, and the limbs, and
as it works and acts through their
instrumentality ;
2 3o A GREAT MYSTERY.
so Christ needs the members of His Body, the

Church, and works and acts through them. And
again, as the body severed from the head is lifeless,
sightless, motionless, and quickly falls to pieces by
decay ;
so the Church severed from Christ would
perish at once ; the light of her infallible teaching
would be extinguished her sacraments would be
;
empty outward signs, without life-giving power, her

discipline and organization would fall to pieces,
and her members would be severed and dis
persed like dust before the wind. The head does
not regard the body as distinct from itself, but as
making with itself one personality. It does not rule
the body selfishly, as though the two had diverse
interests which might come into conflict, but as
having only one common interest and, for a like

;
reason, the body does not obey the head grudgingly

or of necessity, but gladly and willingly. So with
Christ and the Church there is but one nature, one
end, one desire, one operation.
Once more, it is one and the same spirit or
soul which quickens the head and the body; it
is the same vital spark which warms them both ;
the same blood which flows continually backward

and forward from the one to the other and ;
likewise it is one and the same Holy Ghost,

who dwells in His fulness in the God-Man and
who was poured out by Him upon the Church at
Pentecost flowing down from the Head to the
furthest members of the body. It is the same
Blood which courses through the veins and Sacred

Heart of our Saviour, and which fills the chalices of
the Church s daily Sacrifice, and which washes

away the stains of sin in the Sacraments of Baptism
and Penance. It is the fire of one and the same
Divine charity which burns, with its all-but-infinite
intensity and
ardour, in Christ our Head, and
feebly but truly in us His members; for it is kindled
and fanned by the inspiration of one single Spirit.
"
No man ever yet hated his own body," says our

but nourishes it and cherishes
"
teacher, St. Paul,

it, even as Christ does the Church." How tenderly
Christ cares for this Body of His ; how marvellously
He nourishes it with the food of His own Sacred
Flesh how He refreshes its thirst and washes its
;
soil with His own most Precious Blood. Surely we

are bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh taken
;
out of His sacred slept the deep

side, when He
sleep on the Cross of Calvary, and built up, into a
"help
meet for Him; surely, as far as was "
possible,
He has His Eternal Father, He has left His
left
home Heaven, He has left His Blessed Mother
in
in tears for our sake, for us men and for our
"
salvation," that He might cleave to His Church, to
His Spouse for He was enamoured of us poor

;
sinners, and His delight was to be with the sons of

men.
It was the custom in the East, as we see in the
story of Esther and Assuerus, that the monarch s

bride, before she was presented to him for marriage,
should undergo long and tedious course of
a
ceremonial preparation and purification, involving
various ritual anointings and washings. It is to
this St. Paul makes allusion when he tells us how

nobly and unselfishly Christ loved the Church, as

though some great and glorious prince, enamoured
of a poor, humble village maid, were to disguise
himself meanly and to serve her, and to labour and
suffer and bleed for her, that he might thus win her
love and raise her up to share his throne, his honour,
and his kingdom. So Christ loved the Church.
He did not send for her imperiously, but came to
her meek and lowly, came veiled in her own human
guise, came to seek and to save that which was lost.
He "gave Himself up for as the Shepherd who
her,"
gives His life for the perishing sheep,

"
that He
His sanctifying Spirit.
with
"
might sanctify her

Nor does He leave it to His ministering angels to
prepare and purify her for His embrace but He ;
Himself (avro? eavry), the King of Glory, must wash

and purify her with the water and blood that gushed
from His love-pierced Heart. And this labour of
love is going on day by day, as we, the members of
His Body the Church, are being purified and sanc
tified and prepared for the marriage of the Lamb,
when He Himself and no other will present to
Himself the Bride whom He has sought and
purchased, cleansed and purified, and made into
a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or
other sign of her natural mortality and corruption;
but altogether "holy and blameless."
Was there ever a love-myth or romance that
would not read cold and colourless beside this
revelation of God s own
passionate love and devo
tion towards His chosen Spouse, a cloud-wrapped
love shrouded in types and figures, which shoots
out a chance ray from the folds of its dark

mantle a hint and no more of the dazzling
glory behind.
"
Behold thou art fair, O My love 1 I
Behold thou art fair !
Thine eyes are the eyes of a dove ;
As a lily among thorns,

So is My beloved among the daughters.
Arise ! Make haste, My love, My fair one,
and come.
Thou art all fair, O My love,
And there is no spot in thee.
Thou hast wounded My heart, My sister, My
spouse,
With one glance of thine eyes.
One is My love My faultless is but
; one.
Who is she that cometh forth as the rising
morn,
Fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible
as an army set in array ?
Who is cometh up from the desert,

this that
Flowing with delights and leaning on her

Beloved.
Put Meas a seal upon thy heart,
As a seal upon thy arm ;
For love is strong as death.

Many waters cannot quench it,
Neither can the floods drown it ;
If a man should give all the substance of his

house for love,
He shall despise it as nothing."
1
Canticles, passim.
And Lamb, the Church, His blessed

the Bride of the
Spouse, makes answer:
"
I am dark but comely, O ye daughters of

Jerusalem,
As the tents of Kedar,
As the hangings of Solomon.
Do not consider that I am brown
Or that the sun hath altered my colour ;
For it is because the sons of my mother

have fought against me,
And have made me keeper in the vineyard.
Show me, O Thou whom my soul loveth,
Where thou feedest Thy flock, where Thou
liest in the mid-day,
Lest I begin to wander after the flocks of
Thy companions.
As the apple-tree among the trees of the
wood,
So is my Beloved among the sons.
I sat down under His shadow whom I
desired,
And His was sweet to my palate.
fruit
Stay me with flowers, compass me about

with apples,
For I languish with love.
His left hand is under my head and His
right embrace me.

hand shall
and I am His
My Beloved mine, is
Who feedeth His flocks among the anemones,

Till the day break and the shadows flee
away."
It
is, therefore, according to St. Paul, as an
adumbration and prefiguring of the oneness of
Christ and His Church that
marriage was first
instituted as a great sacrament or sign a "
mystery," ;
or inarticulate hint, as the word means.

But as the sacrifice of the Old Law fell short of
that of the New so does the;
marriage of the Old
Law fall short of the sacramental marriage of
Christians. The Mosaic sacrifices looked forward
to Calvary, the Eucharist looks back
upon it they ;
obscurely, as to an unknown future It distinctly, as ;
to a well-defined past. They proclaimed the need

of a victim It supplies
; it.
They signified ; It fulfils
and effects. So of Christian Matrimony ; it figures
the espousals of Christ and the Church, not as
a thing that has yet to be, but as a
thing which
is not as a thing
already virtually accomplished;
altogether hidden and conjecturable but ; as a
thing to some extent revealed and more clearly
delineated. not merely points to Christ and the
It
Church as to the heavenly and ideal of
archetype
the matrimonial relationship, but
effectually confers
grace whereby the earthly is conformed to the
heavenly, and becomes its created expression and
utterance.
same idea again, God in the
Or, to illustrate the
beginning gave corn man
and grape, bread and
wine. And from the beginning bread was a
"great
sacrament," a sign of God who is the life and

support of man s soul and heart a sign of the yet
;
undreamt-of mysterious Bread which came down

from Heaven to give life to the world, and was laid
in the manger, House of Bread a sign of the

in the ;
gathering together of the corn of God s elect from

the four quarters of the earth into one bread and
one body a sign of the Christian antitype, the
;
Eucharistic Bread of Life, which was given us by

the Bread of Life Himself by Himself, He gave "
Himself with His own hands." Yet who could have

read this great mystery, this sacramental meaning
in God s good gift who but God Himself or His
;
prophets, to whom His secrets w ere r

in part revealed ?
But to us it was revealed in its fulness when Christ

took the bread of our natural life and changed it
into the Bread of supernatural life, and said, "Take,
eat, this is My Body." Similarly he took the
marriage of nature and changed it into the marriage
of grace and to the contract, which was already
;
an outward sign, He attached the inward grace

which it signified and to the manifold natural
;
bonds he added a supernatural bond higher and

holier and more insoluble, saying, Whom God "
hath joined together, let no man put asunder."

It is God who ties soul to soul by this mysterious
communication supernatural grace, of which
of
neither alone the complete recipient, but both
is
together, each having need of the other, each having

power over the other and even if ever the law of;
nations could permit the breach of the moral and

physical bond, tied by the parties themselves, it can
never give a right or power to sever the bond of
grace, which they have tied, not in their own
person, but only as ministers of the sacrament, as
mere instruments in the hands of God, the principal
author. Divorce from this perfected marriage bond

is as the sin of schism a rending asunder of the
Mystical Body of Christ.
Christian sacramental marriage, therefore, confers
grace on man and more and more
wife to set forth
perfectly in conduct
their with one another the
wedded life of Christ and the Church. The two
together are to be one body and one spirit not one ;
body only, but one spirit, one life and man s life is
;
not mere animation, but intelligence. Still more,
he has a supernatural life of grace and in this the

;
two are to be one, as in what is highest and best in

both. Short of this we have a merely human,
natural, unsacramental union short of this again,
;
there is a less than human and purely animal

marriage, which is not -even an empty sign of grace.
For if the natural man has a two-fold nature and
work, animal and spiritual, the baptized has a third
and supernatural life and function, the life of grace,
to be developed and perfected and exercised in the
practice of supernatural virtues. And it is in this

third and highest work that he is to seek a help
meet for him in the Christian wife, in the mother of
Christian children.
As one being, man and wife have one and the
same supernatural and spiritual interest. The head
does not use and rule the body as distinct from
itself; nor is the supremacy and authority of the
husband over the wife to be compared to that of
parents over their offspring, who are subjected to
them as totally distinct personalities. He must not
sacrifice or postpone his wife s bodily welfare to his
own. The head is well when the body is well and ;
when the head suffers, the body suffers with it. The
head must think for the body and the body must
labour for the head, each living for the other as for
itself. Husband and wife each must live for the
other as for themselves ; for the spirit first, and then
for the body; as Christ s first care is for the
Church s sanctification, and then for her temporal
peace. Still there is a true, natural, and willing
subjection of the body to the head and the Church ;
sits ever at the feet of Christ, to learn His will and
to hear His words and so too the wife s oneness

;
with her husband does not free her from a willing

submission to him a yoke which is for her liberty
and honour and not for her degradation, and which
only galls so far as it is

unlawfully resisted.
Once more the head and body are inseparable,
save by death Christ and His Church are
;
eternally
united; for He is the King immortal, "of whose
Kingdom there shall be no end." He is the mediator
of an everlasting covenant or
marriage-contract
between Himself and His Church, a contract sealed
with the Blood of the New and Eternal Testament.
So man and wife whom the God of grace joins
together by a supernatural tie in the Christian
sacrament, no man may put asunder. It is for God
alone, the Author of life and Lord of death, to
sever by the sword of death the band which the
breath of His Spirit has fastened. There is no
power on earth which can undo what is done by
Christian marriage and all pretence at such power
;
is founded in blindness, ignorance, or

blasphemous
denial of Christ and His Church. Moreover, one

head and one body, and no more. Two heads and
one body two bodies and one head, were a
;
monstrous violation of nature. Christ has one

Church and only one, One is My dove, My fault "
less one and the Church has but one Christ, one
;
"
Life-giver, one Law-giver. And the Christian sacra

ment forbids and nullifies absolutely, what the law
of nature forbids all but absolutely, the simultaneous
union of one man with more than one woman so ;
that adultery, which was always a sin of deadliest
dye, is in a Christian a sacrilege also a profanation

of a great sacrament.
Again, the Church, the Virgin Spouse of Christ,
through the overshadowing power of His Holy
the joyful mother of His children,
Spirit, is
"
Who
maketh a barren woman to keep house, a joyful
mother of children." Then shalt thou see, and "
abound," is and thou shalt

foresaid of the Church,
"
say, Who
hath begotten me these?" "Thy sons shall
come from afar, and thy daughters shall rise up at
thy side." And of Christ it is said :
"
Thy wife as a
fruitful vine, on the sides of thy house. Thy children
as olive plants, round about thy table." It is of the
new birth in the font of Baptism that wondering
Nicodemus asks, Can a man when he is old enter
"
into his mother s womb and be born again and ;

"
he receives for hisanswer "
Amen, I say to you,

:
except a man be born again of water and the Spirit

he cannot enter the Kingdom of God."
The
Christian parents are not merely imitators,
but in some sense co-operators in this fertility of the
Church. They, together with the ministers of baptism,

are the means by which the Church increases and
multiplies and replenishes the earth and subdues it.
They should, therefore, be conscious and intelligent
agents of Christ in this matter. The Christian mother
should remember that her child is .not full-born
until it is born to grace ;
that the fruit of her
maternity not the child of wrath, but the child of
is
grace and
;
that the care, nurture, and education of
her offspring has for its principal aim the formation
of their early consciousness to the knowledge, love,
and grace of God not merely their natural spiritual
perfection, not merely their intellectual and moral
development, but their engracement and supernatural
sanctification.
Such being the type, the ideal of Christian
marriage, what shall we say of the reality as we see
it around us in this de-Christianized country, where
Catholics find it so hard, so impossible to keep

mind or heart free from the infectious pestilence of
unbelief, misbelief, and moral corruption a country ;
where the true idea of a sacrament of any sort has

been lost to the people at large for three centuries ;
where the nature of the Church and of her mystical

union with Christ is wholly unknown where the ;
Catholic teaching concerning purity and chastity is

simply ridiculed as Manichean in theory and impos
sible in practice where the law of the land sanctions
;
an adulterous remarriage of those who have been

divorced, and permits marriages which in the
Church s eyes are incestuous, null, and void whose ;
religion despises virginity and celibacy, and holds

but lightly to the perpetuity or

unity of Christian
marriage.
Surely it is only too evident that Protestantism
has done its work thoroughly; that it has first
rationalized the notion of marriage and robbed it of
all itsmystical and spiritual import; then secularized
what was a sacrament of the Gospel, and
betrayed
it into the hands of
Caesar; and by these means has
finally succeeded in degrading and profaning an
institution on whose elevation and purity the whole
fabric of true civilization Nor can the
depends.
tardy penitence of a few of her children ever undo
the sin of the Established
Religion of England, or
ransom that Sacrament which has been sold into
slavery for silver ; and for whose honour and liberty
Catholic bishops have ever been
ready to go to
prison and to death.
3
III.
only remains to add a few words on the

It
subject of the intellect and moral equality of man

and woman as bearing on the Catholic
conception of
domestic society. Here, while we have to
guard on
the one hand against the false on which
principles
the modern movement in favour of the intellectual
and social emancipation of woman is based, and the
excesses to which it is carried, yet on the other
there is a danger lest we
suppose the Church to
be altogether hostile to certain conclusions because
1
This is condensed from an article which
appeared in the
American Catholic Quarterly,
July, 1897.
she hostile to the premisses from which they are

is
drawn, or to the spirit in which they are enforced.

In other matters, we must distinguish
this, as in
between the practice and sentiments of certain
Catholics and the principles and teaching of the
Catholic religion we may not conclude that the
;
condition of woman in any Catholic country or at any

of Catholic principles
particular epoch is the product
unless we can clearly trace the connection. For the
leaven of an idea works way slowly. The Church
its
will tolerate much, and will connive at many inevit

able evils attendant on imperfect stages of social
of
development, if only she can secure the essentials
religion. She "has many things to say" to the
semi-pagan and semi-barbarian, but they "cannot
bear them The natural growth of subjective
yet."
truth cannot be hurried, else it will have no deep

root ;
and this is as true of the collective, as of the
individual mind.
It need hardly be stated that the two principles
of self-sufficient individualism and rationalism are

essentially uncatholic and anti-catholic. Although
the Church abhors the socialist extreme which
enslaves the unit to the multitude, making society
an end in itself and not a means to the good of its
several members, yet she holds firmly to the truth
that it is only in and through society domestic,
civil, that personality can be duly
or ecclesiastical
developed. In the mystical body of Christ she

finds the archetype of all society, whose unity she
a living
accordingly concludes to be rather that of
organism than that of an artificial aggregate of
A GREAT MYSTERY.
243
independent units bound to one another by the

force of self-interest. Nemo sibi vivit
"
None for
the law of the former association
himself," is Each ;
"
for himself" is the law of the latter.

Together with
this conception of society as a natural organism
goes the doctrine of the right of authority and the
duty of obedience. If the subjection of members to
the head, of parts to the whole, is demanded
by
nature, it is therefore commanded by that Personal
Power in and above nature. Hence obedience to
lawful authority becomes a
duty to God, and the
right of that authority is, in some sense, Divine. On
the other hand, if all
society originates in a free
contract, whereof the motive is self-interest if no ;
unit cares for the universal

good except so far as it
is a means to his own isolated
then the
advantage,
submission is
really to self-imposed restrictions, and
eventually one obeys oneself; which is only a wrong
way of saying he follows his own will, and not
the will of another. In a word, with the artificial or
contract-theory of society, the very notion of obedi

ence must vanish.
As, in the
Catholic view, the family is the
simplest social unit, so the conjugal association is
the simplest and germinal form of the In family.
that society of two, as in all
society, the distinction
between head and body, ruler and ruled, is
essential,
because where a conflict of wills in
morally indifferent
matters is possible, social life a of
requires power
determining and ending such controversy; a right
of decision on the one hand and a
duty of acquies
cence on the other. We
say "morally indifferent
matters," for where it a question of right and

is
God the decision of a higher

wrong and of s law,
court has already been given. This right of social
the Catholic
superiority in the conjugal society
attributed to the husband. She
religion has always
has it as the postulate of nature, and there
regarded
fore as the command of God. She finds it confirmed
by revelation in the account of the primitive and

Divine institution of marriage, and further, in the
restoration of that institution by Christ to more
than its rank
in its elevation to the
pristine dignity ;
of a sacrament signifying and effecting a relation

between husband and wife analogous to that which
subsists between Christ the Head, and the Church,
His body, the archetype of all social organism.
"
As the Church is subject to Christ, so let

women
be to their husbands in all things;" "the for
husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the

head of the Church." Obedience in all matters
pertaining to that little society,

and when nothing
is ordered contrary to any higher authority, is the
wife s duty and to command in such matters and
;
under such limits is the husband s right. And it is

not, as contract-theories conceive it, a right
which
the unmarried woman possesses over herself and
which in marriage she gives over to her husband,
as she might give over her fortune but one which ;
the first time together

springs into existence for
with the contract. As I cannot obey myself, so
neither can I or force myself; and, not
command
to
having that power myself, I cannot give
it
another. But I can posit the conditions on which

he receives it from the very nature of things; that

is,from God. In every free promise I put myself
in another s power yet the power exercised over
;
me is not and was not mine, but it is the binding

power of truth, or of that Lawgiver who forbids me
to lie and commands me to fulfil my words. In
this sense, all lawful authority is Divine, even as
truth is.
It is, however, important to notice the distinction

between social or official superiority and personal
a distinction ever insisted on by the Church in the
interests of liberty. Just as, in her ministers and
priests, she bids us discern between the man and
his ecclesiastical office, and assures us that the
personal unfitness of the minister in no way affects

the validity of his ministrations, so, in the question
of jurisdiction, ecclesiastical, civil, or domestic, she
admonishes those in office not to credit themselves
with personal superiority, or to govern, as it were,
in right of possessing greater wisdom, or holiness,
or ability than their subjects nor to imagine that
;
an appointment necessarily carries with it an infal

lible guarantee of aptitude, present, past, or future.
Thus Ignatius of Loyola, who expresses the common
doctrine of the Church in a form peculiarly distress
ing to the pseudo-liberal mind, says, in his well-
known Letter on Obedience For indeed it is not
:
"
as though he were endued and enriched with
prudence or benevolence or other divine gifts, of

whatever kind, that a superior is to be obeyed, but
only on this account that he holds the place of God,
and exercises His authority, who says: He that
heareth you, heareth Me. The tyranny of indi

vidualism in government is altogether opposed to
Catholic theory; and we cannot conclude at once
that, because the husband has authority
over the
therefore the man is superior to the woman
wife, ;
but, at most, that there is in the man, as such,

a
certain aptitude for that particular office which is
not found in the woman. Let it suffice, by way of

illustration of our last remark, to refer to the
Catholic veneration for the Holy Family of Naza
reth, where St. Joseph, as the husband of Mary, held
the office of superior over one who, in the Church s
estimation, was almost immeasurably his better in
light and wisdom and divine grace. Official superi
ority, therefore, does not

involve personal superiority,
any more than personal superiority in one point or

more, means superiority in all.
Still less is it in keeping with the Catholic con
ception that the subjection of the wife should be

slavish, or thegovernment of the husband despotic.
For matrimony is a true
"
society,"
and the wife is
a
soda, and not serva ; that is to say, she is, as
person, both intellectually and morally
her husband s
associa
companion and friend, and the end of their
tion is not the repression, but the fuller development
of her personality. And this is the Church s ideal

of government everywhere, in home and state, so
far as men are sufficiently imbued with unselfish
and social instincts to profit by it. The law and
the spirit of fear is for the infancy of races the ;
and the spirit of love for their maturity.

Gospel
Where the less ideal state of domestic society
prevails, the Church may tolerate it as expedient or

necessary under the circumstances, but she is never
satisfied with it.
Now all this is wholly unintelligible if we accept
the contract-theory of society in general and extend
it to the matrimonial bond. There is, in that view,
as little assignable reason why the wife s place in
the association should be one of inferiority, as why,
in a partnership of any two free individuals for a
common advantage, one should preside over the
other ;
and where there is no authority there is no
place for obedience.
Thus an American advocate of Woman s Rights,
in a chapterheaded Obey, 1 tells us how he protested
one day to a clergyman against the unrighteous
"
pledge to obey,"
used in the Protestant marriage
service :
"
I hope, I said, to live to see that word

expunged from the Episcopal service, as it has been
from that of the Methodists.
Why ? he asked. Is it because you know *
"
they will not obey, whatever their promise ?

Because they ought not, I said.
"
u
Well, said he, after a few moments reflection,
and looking up frankly, I do not think they ought. "
The writer goes on to say :

"
Whoever is pledged
to obey technically and literally a slave, no matter
is
how many roses surround his chains from which

"
we must conclude that soldiers and sailors, civil

servants and subjects are slaves, or else that they
all
are perfectly free, morally and physically, to do as

1
Common Sense About Women, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
they like in everything. Finally he says Make :

"
the marriage-tie as close as Church or State can

make it, but let it be equal and impartial. That it
may be so, the word obey must be abandoned or
made reciprocal." The idea of
"
reciprocal obedi
hard to grasp, but, as far as we understand
"
ence is
it, it does not augur well for domestic peace. But,

in truth, all obedience is to a superior; and just so
far as there is equality, obedience is impossible. In
fact, on equalitarian principles the matrimonial
relation is essentially different from what it is con
ceived to be, not only by Christianity, but by the
hitherto unsophisticated reason of mankind. There
are still, even for the equalitarian, certain prudential
motives which make monogamy desirable and divorce
undesirable within given limits, but those limits are
soon reached.
It is absurd and futile for would-be orthodox
writers to contend against the inevitable weakening
of the marriage-bond, which is the necessary result
of certain false social principles, unless they are
prepared to repudiate those
principles altogether.
If all authority, civil and ecclesiastical, is only by
delegation from the people, with whom it rests
inalienably; they not only designate its holder,
if
but create binding forceits

if it represents only ;
their preponderating wishes and appetites, and not

their judgment of what is eternally and divinely
right and just, whether they judge for themselves
or choose others to judge for them if it is merely ;
self-interest that binds the members of society to

one another ;
if obedience is only an indirect
following of one s own will, subjected to that

of another freely and revocably; then the self-
interested association man and woman must
of
be conceived in the same way, and the word
" "
obey either expunged from the Protestant

marriage-service or explained away. Indeed, we
must freely admit that the most advanced and
extravagant ideas of woman s position are but the
logical outcome, a necessary product of equali-
tarianism. That philosophy tends to deny any
difference between the sexes that is not
strictly
It refuses to admit that,
physiological. morally and
intellectually, they are complementary one of another;
that the perfect humanity, the complete mind and
character is divided between them that human ;
parentage includes the mental and moral forma

tion of the offspring, to which both parents are
instrumental and necessary each in their own
way.
Beyond the limits of physiology it
regards all
differences and inequalities as artificial and iniqui
tous, and it tends logically to the eventual abolition
of matrimony in any recognizable sense of the
term.
And now we may inquire in what, precisely,
consists that inequality which, in domestic
society,
gives the husband headship over the wife. Those
who make no distinction between what is and what
must be, between what must be and what ought to
be, will freely grant that in the state of rude savagery
the wife depends for protection on the
superior
physical force and liberty of the husband, and that
such dependence puts the reins into his hands. But
25 o A GREAT MYSTERY.
as social evolution relieves her of this dependence

more and more, it may be asked, What basis remains
for the old relationship ? If woman is not intel
lectually and morally inferior and dependent, why

should she be the one to submit ?
Now it is most necessary to observe that
"superior"
is here a relative term, implying
some end to be secured. The end in question
is the government of the domestic society, the
government of the members only in matters
pertaining to their common good, and in no
others. For example, when we agree that in the
savage state the man is more fit to govern the
house or wigwam than the woman, we mean that he
is superior in fighting power, being physically less
encumbered. We do not mean that even physio
all round, but that,
logically he is a superior being
having some attributes which she has not, he can
secure an end which she cannot just as, in many
matters, she is superior in virtue of capacities which
he has not.
If, then, woman s subjection in more developed
domestic society is founded on a certain intellectual

or moral inferiority, it does not mean that she is in
all points intellectually or morally inferior to man, but
only other than man ;

it does not mean that she is
less fit for high intellectual or moral attainments,

but only less fit for government, less endowed, as a
rule, with the qualities, positive and negative, required
for that trust. Whether those qualities are of all
others the most admirable and enviable may be
not a con-
questioned. Widespread intellectualism is
dition favourable to social tranquillity and progress ;

far more important are the stolid, practical qualifi
cations to which the Teutonic races owe their steady
progressiveness, and the absence of which makes

free government almost unworkable in more fervid
nations. Where idealism, imagination, and emotion
prevail very widely, they are fatal to that stability

which is needed for social order and growth. It was
not without a touch of humour that Plato looked
forward to the rule of philosophers as an ideal
government nor should we choose

; a civil pre
sident on account of the fervour of his piety or
the sublimity of his political conceptions, although
allowing these gifts to be far superior to an insight
into the theory of taxation. What, then, is this
peculiar characteristic which naturally fits man for
the headship in domestic society ? Aquinas tells
us: "There are two kinds of subjection, servile,
and domestic or civil. The latter is the kind of
subjection whereby the woman is by nature subject
to the man, because of the greater rational discretion
which man naturally possesses. 1
The whole human character in its adequate
perfection is commission
put into between the two
sexes. Morally and intellectually, no less than
physiologically, they are complementary and that ;
not merely as companions or associates, but as

parents and educators of their offspring. It is on
this natural and necessary diversity of mental and
moral character that matrimonial society is founded.
But when we reflect on the qualities needed for
direction and government, chief among them seems
to be that discretio rationis, or reasoning discern

ment of which Aquinas speaks a power of taking
a cold, impartial, abstract view of things a gift ;
immensely useful, if not very attractive. Not, of
course, that every man possesses this pre-eminently,

but that he does so normally in so far as the mascu
line character is duly developed in him. Where, on
the other hand, it is the wife who excels in this
talent, there usually results a disturbance of due

domestic harmony, or else a complete inversion of
the matrimonial relationships, which confirms the
theory of Aquinas very satisfactorily. It is not,
however, the actual possession of this reasoning
discernment that constitutes or measures the
husband s right to govern, any more than the
authority of any other ruler depends on his
aptitude. The presumption

of such aptitude is the
implicit condition of his designation, but the desig

nation is not invalidated by the falseness of the
presumption.
The scope of marital government, as we have
already said, is confined to matters concerning the
common domestic good, and the subjection of the
wife is not servile, but social: "for the servant
knoweth not what his master doeth," but the wife
is governed in domestic matters, not despotically,
without reference to her views and inclinations,
but politically, as a person, and with the greatest
deference to those views and inclinations which is
compatible with the common good. Nemo sibi vivit
None for himself," is, as we have said, the ideal of
"
all Christian society. The husband is not made for

the wife, nor the wife for the husband, but each for
the twain.
It will be already evident that there is nothing
in the Catholic view favouring a belief in the general
intellectual or moral inferiority of woman and how ;
perfectly in accord with the mind of Christianity

is her highest development in both respects will
presently appear. Of course, we make a distinction
between necessary and actual inferiority. The former
may be repudiated very plausibly, the latter cannot.
As we have said, the division of labour and of
domestic cares which was needed in rude social
states, and which is now, and perhaps always will
be, needed among the unleisured classes, requires
for the majority of young girls a training which will
fit them for their probable after-work a training ;
which concentrates the mind on small, practical

details, and which tends, apart from precautionary
measures, to produce narrowness, except so far as
religion raises the mind to greater and more universal
conceptions. Indeed, the very existence of the
movement for woman s intellectual
emancipation is
a confession of an actual and widespread inferiority.
Again, it may be taken for granted that the un
natural will never so far prevail, but that the majority
of married women will always be involved in the
cares of maternity. This, as a heavy tax not only
on the time but on the physical energy necessary for
severe intellectual work, will put them at a serious
disadvantage. In a word, equality of opportunity,
which essential to fair competition, can never be
is
accorded to that same majority, owing to conditions

fixed, not by custom, nor by male tyranny, but by

nature.
But those who would contend for an altogether
essential inferiority of intellect on the part of women
have a very difficult thesis to prove, for the simple
reason that all their instances are met either by
denying equality of opportunity, or by the contention
that diversity of intellectual gifts is not the same as
inferiority. In proportion as equal opportunities
are given from the first, we see everywhere a
practical refutation of their view.

How much the Catholic religion, which exalts a
Woman to the highest place in creation, favours
and furthers her intellectual and moral development
and ignores any such essential difference, is plain
from a retrospect of the past. Let me quote the
results of an admirable article in the Catholic World
for June, 1875, none the less appropriate because
written in reply to Mr. Gladstone s taunt to the
effect that the conquests of the Catholic Church in
England were
"
chiefly among women," and there

fore of no account. After noting the homage done
to woman s intellectual power by the religions of
Greece and Rome in the worship of a woman as
the goddess of wisdom, and patroness of just and
humane warfare in the cultus of Vesta, of the
;
Muses, of the Fates, of the Graces, and in the

honouring of such names as Rhea, Alcestis, Ariadne,
Alcyone, and so forth, the article goes on to notice
her place in the Old Testament, as exemplified in
the prophetesses and wives of the patriarchs in ;
Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Ruth,

Esther, andmany others. Then we are reminded

how it was among women that Christ found His
most numerous, apt, and constant disciples when
on earth, thus coming under the lash of Mr. Glad
stone s sarcasm. St. Paul speaks of the women who
laboured with him in the Gospel. Timothy learnt
the Scriptures from Lois and Eunice. St.Thecla 1
was skilled in profane and sacred science and philo
sophy, and excelled in the various branches of
polite literature. St. Apollonia preached the faith

at Alexandria, and converted many by her eloquence.
St. Catharine devoted herself to the study of philo
sophy, especially that of Plato, and confuted the

ablest Pagan philosophers of her day. She is
honoured as the patroness of learning and eloquence
and of scholastic theology, and art represents her as
the Christian Urania. After remarking that "the
increasing demand which we have on every side for

a more substantial and scholarly training of the sex
does not look forward to that which they never had,
but backward to what they have lost or abandoned,"
the writer reminds us how it was St. Macrina who
taught SS. Basil and Gregory; how SS. Cosmas and
Damian were instructed by Theodora. Even as "
early as the second century," writes a distinguished

the zeal of religious women for letters
"
scholar,
provoked the satire of the enemies of Christianity."
St. Fulgentius was educated by his mother, who
made him learn Homer and Menander by heart.
St. Paula stimulated St. Jerome to some of his
greatest writings, and St. Eustochium was a faultless

1
St. Paul s disciple.
Hebrew scholar. St.Chrysostom dedicated seventeen

of his letters to St. Olympias and St. Marcella s;
acquirements won her the title of the

"
glory of the
Roman ladies." The convents
England in the of
seventh and eighth centuries vied with the monaste
ries in letters. St. Gertrude was skilled in Greek, and
it was a woman who introduced the study of Greek
into the monastery of St. Gall. St. Hilda was con

sulted on theology by Bishops assembled in council.
Queen Editha, wife of St. Edward the Confessor,

taught grammar and logic. St. Boniface was the
teacher of a brilliant constellation of literary
women. 1
We are told of women who were familiar
with the Greek and Latin Fathers ; of an abbess
who wrote an encyclopaedia of all the science of her
day ;
of a nun whose Latin poems and stanzas were
the marvel of the learned ;
of the injunction of the
Council of Cloveshoe (747) that abbesses should
diligently provide for the education of their nuns ;
of the labours of Lioba in conjunction with St. Boni
face ; of a convent school whose course included
Latin and Greek, Aristotle s philosophy, and the
liberal arts ;
of women in the Papal University of
Bologna eminent canon law, medicine, mathe in
matics, art, literature of Prosperzia de Rossi, who ;
taught sculpture there of Elena Cornaro, a doctor ;
at Milan
of Plautilla Brizio, the architect of the
;
chapel of St. Benedict at Rome. In the eighteenth

century we find women taking their degrees in juris
prudence and philosophy at the Papal Universities.
In 1758 we have Anna Mazzolina professing anatomy
1 "
Valde eruditae in liberali scientia."

at Bologna, and Maria Agnese appointed by the

Pope to the chair of mathematics. Novella d Andrea
taught canon law for ten years at Bologna, and a
woman succeeded Cardinal Mezzofanti as professor
of Greek. Still more abundant and overwhelming
is the evidence for woman s moral and spiritual
equality with man in the Church s esteem. If forti
tude is in question, we have SS.Thecla, Perpetua,
Felicity, Agnes, Lucy, Agatha, Cecilia, Apollonia,
Catharine, and innumerable hosts of women who
faced the torments of martyrdom. If men have
forsaken their homes for the Gospel s sake in their
thousands, women have done so in their tens of
thousands, though for them the wrench, as a rule, is
far more violent and painful. In self-denial, in
austerity, in patient endurance, in silence, in un
selfish devotion to Christ s poor, in all that is rightly
supposed to demand the highest degree of courageous
self-mastery, they have shown themselves, if not
superior, at least fully equal to the other sex.
If the number of men saints exceeds that of
women, it must be recollected that the canonized

represent but a handful of the saints, and chiefly
those whose sanctity was notorious and before the
public gaze a fact which lessens the chances for
;
the official recognition of female sanctity. For the

same reason it is observable how far more frequent
isthe canonization of bishops than of simple priests,

although no one would suppose that saintly priests
were less numerous than saintly bishops, considering
the numerical proportion of one order to the other.
Again, it may be plausibly contended that sanctity
R
in men more evidently miraculous and out of the

is
common than in women, who, in a sense, are

naturally devout and spiritual-minded.
It would be tiresome to enumerate the religious
orders and congregations founded and ruled by

women. Indeed, the extent to which the Church
has entrusted women with jurisdiction and right of
doctrine of
government would seem opposed to the
Aquinas, referred to above, were it not
that this juris
diction was very rarely exercised over communities
of men, and was usually dependent on higher authority
vested in bishops or prelates.
impossible to deny
In the light of all this, it is
that where the Church has her way, and is not

trammelled by local prejudices, she desires the
fullest possible mental and moral development of
compatible with the discharge of the
women social
duties required by nature and God s law. Here,

as elsewhere, the natural organization of society
forbids, and will always forbid, absolute equality
of opportunity. But it is the aim of sane progress
to eliminate all unjust and unreasonable inequa
lities, and to secure the least possible waste of
those spiritual energies in which the true power
and wealth of every society consists. Nor must we
unmarried
suppose that it is only in the leisured and
that the Catholic religion desires culture. The
Church knows far too well the power and influence
of the wife and mother not to see that their elevation
means the elevation of both husband and children,
and that eventually it is they who give the moral
tone to the whole community. Woman is naturally
A GREAT MYSTERY.
the guardian of the spiritual wealth of the

family,
and for that trust,
especially in these days, mere
piety, which is not also educated and intelligent, is
of little avail. The first formation of the mind is
from the mother, and the impressions which she
leaves are indelible. It may truly be said that
whatever the Christian religion has done for the
elevation of public morals, it has done
through the
instrumentality of A brief study of Mr.
women.
Devas s admirable book on Family Life will
little
confirm what perhaps no one with
any knowledge of
human history will dispute, and will prove that where
woman is debased and basely thought of, there, in
proportion, public morality is at a low ebb.
We must not credit the Catholic religion with
the sentiments of certain recluses of the desert
who,
under the bias of Oriental influence, consider a fierce
contempt for women to be a great point of virtue ;
who insist much on

the priority of Eve s share in
our racial disaster,
forgetting that theology regards
it as quite insignificant with that of
compared
Adam, and more than abundantly counterbalanced
by the part of Mary in our redemption who look ;
upon all the immorality in the world as an evil

brought upon man by that creature which God made
to be a "help meet for him "a little touch of
Manicheism, such as induces some to regard wine

as essentially demoniacal because men choose to
drink too much of it. A moment s reflection will
show that it is in the reverence for and not in the
contempt of woman that purity must look for its
only reliable safeguard ; and it is with this in her
mind that the Church counsels a devotion to the
Virgin Mother in the interests of that virtue.

In conclusion, if we contrast the Catholic ideal
of womanhood with that of modern irreligion one
the fair fruit of sound reason enlightened by Catholic
faith, the other the base issue of crude equalitari-
anism and sense-philosophy there is little difficulty
in seeing that the former conception is strong and
fullof energies yet to be developed, while the latter

contains within itself the principle of its own decay
and death. The downfall of the family, the pro
fanation of marriage, means the downfall and
profanation of woman. Whether she likes to allow
it or not, it is only in virtue of a waning survival
of that chivalrous spirit which Christianity created

and fostered, that the new woman," as she is
"
called, is able to elbow her way to the front as she

does. If manever rebarbarized by the withdrawal
is
of the softening influence of home, if woman becomes
nothing more to him than a competitor in the general

struggle for wealth, she will eventually be forced
down to that degradation which has always been
her lot under the reign of pure selfishness and brute
force. If it is her greater unselfishness which has
caused her so much suffering in the past, it has also
been the cause of her great power for good. Self
ishness is brute force ; unselfishness a spiritual
force. She can never compete with man if the
contest is to be one of brute force. It is the Catholic

Church who has raised through her, has
her, and,
raised the world, though both processes are still
struggling but slowly towards completion.
THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS,
i.
thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments if

"
If
;
thou be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and

wilt
give to the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven; and come,
follow Me." St. Matt. xix. 17, 21.
As there is a growing disposition on the

part of
some to speak disparagingly of what is called the
"religious state" as though it were
something
merely adventitious to the Catholic religion some ;
thing useful and perhaps necessary for past ages but

rather out of place in our own times a desirable ;
ornament when not procured at too

extravagant a
cost it
may not be amiss to say a few words on
;
the nature of this institution, its

place in the Church
and its relation to the Christian religion. As intel
ligent Catholics, such knowledge ought to interest us
for itsown sake ; but living as we do among non-
Catholics who are continually crying down the life
of perfection and the practice of the
Evangelical
Counsels, it is doubly necessary that we should
have a firm grasp of the truth both for their sake
and for our own, to silence
not to convince them, if
and to satisfy ourselves. And be
it noticed that our
present scope is to defend, not religious orders in

the concrete, nor
monasticism, but the religious
state in general, that
is, the profession of the three
262 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
Evangelical Counsels, whether independently, or

in a society with others whether in the world, or ;
in the cloister, or in the hermitage. The religious

state is a permanent and essential feature of Catholic
Christianity whereas the particular orders or insti

;
tutions into which religious have at various times

enrolled themselves for corporate action in the
Church s contingent and transitory,
service, are
varying with the necessities of the age and locality :
"They have their day and cease to be." But the

religious state lives with the life of the Church, of
which it is an essential manifestation.
St. Paul boasts and he is a great boaster that
the world is crucified to him and he to the world ;
and "
God
says he, "that I should boast in
forbid,"
anything save only in the Cross of Christ." The

Cross has become so outwardly honoured since
those days such an object of worship and adora
;
tion ;
so rayed round with secular glory from the
labours of poet and painter, that his words do
not soundmad in our ears as they did in
so
the ears of those who looked on crucifixion as we
do on hanging or penal servitude, and who felt as
little reverence for the Cross as we do for the
gallows or the tread-mill. To get the full flavour
of his sentiment we should have to put the word
gallows of cross, and hanged instead of

instead
crucified. His meaning is that, as far as we are
permeated with the spirit of the Gospel, so far
shall we feel an ever-growing contempt for the
life and conduct and aims of the spirit of worldli-
ness wheresoever manifested in Catholics or non- ;

THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS. 263
Catholics ;
in Christians or non-Christians ;
in its
professed votaries or in its professed enemies. It is
not the world but worldliness which is hateful to

God a subtle leaven of unbelief and selfish egoism
lurking in all our hearts ;
and breaking out like a
plague over the millions of humanity. And as our
contempt of worldliness increases, so too will our

reverence for the "Evangelical Counsels" and the
religious state increase. For just as the Church of
Christ took the hated gibbet and above her lifted it
altars, and taught men to bow down and worship

what the world spat upon and trampled under foot ;
so by the existence of her religious she continually

sets theworld at defiance ;
and teaches men to love
and honour and when it is God s will to embrace
what the world hates and despises and flies from,
namely, poverty, self-restraint, mortification, obedi
ence, submission, humility.
Our Divine Saviour is rightly said to have
sanctifiedand exalted and imparted a sort of sacra
mental dignity to whatever He touched, or used, or
made in any way His own. It is the instinct of
love to choose the lot, to imitate the ways of those
we love.
"
Lord," says Peter,

"
I will go with Thee

to prison and to death." It was the purpose of God
to govern and reform the world, not by theories and
philosophies, but by this imitative power of personal

love ;to draw men s hearts to Himself so that it
should be their chief glory and joy to live as He
lived, choosing and loving the lot which He chose
and loved walking in the paths trodden by His
;
blessed feet.
But the world into which He came was a world

where riches, wealth, possessions were worshipped
and idolized to the ruin of souls and the dishonour
of God. Idolized," because they were sought as an
"
end in themselves or sought in a spirit of selfish

;
individualism, not for the common good, but for

the exclusive good of the unit where accordingly;
wealth was acquired by fraud and oppression of the

poor ;where the labourer was despised by the
capitalist as the vanquished by the conqueror. For
it was not
only the little world of Judea two thou
sand years ago, but the great world of all the nations
and ages that He came to heal. It was in answer
to the crywhich to-day goes up to the ears of God
from the oppressed millions of humanity no less
than to the cries and groanings of past ages that
He has come down as Emmanuel God, one of
ourselves ;Jesus, the Carpenter of Nazareth.
To poor and rich alike the love of wealth is
the most fruitful source of misery, spiritual and

temporal.
Superabundance on the one hand is a snare to
the rich, making them feel independent of God in
so many ways, like the fool who said, "
Soul,
take thy ease ;
thou hast much riches laid up."
Furthermore, it is the key to endless pleasures and

enjoyments the appetite for which, when unduly
indulged, grows insatiable and tyrannical and ;
breeds that sensuality which blinds the understand

ing to every spiritual conception and makes the
heart cruel and selfish. It is no less the passport
to vain honour and to influence, which also come
quickly to be desired as ends in themselves with

a spiritual hunger less degrading but really more
soul-destroying than the craving for luxuries and
enjoyments. The mere possession of superabundant
wealth is no sin in itself, no injustice, as socialists
it must
pretend necessarily be but it is a continual ;
occasion, almost a proximate occasion, of such

tendencies and temptations as we have just spoken
of. For it is all but impossible for ordinary souls
to possess wealth and yet not to love it and the ;
"
love of money is the root of all evil." How few

are they who not only believe but who realize that
their wealth given them by God only for the
is
common good; and that if they are allowed certain

superfluities and enjoyments as the fruit of their
own or their parents industry, it is only because
the common good requires that there should be such
reasonable differences, and that there should be a
stimulus to industry; and because social unity re
quires that we should share often both good and evil,
wealth and poverty, reward and penalty for which
we are not personally responsible. Hence it is not
against the poor but for the poor that the rich hold
their wealth insomuch as the poor are members
;
of the same body. It is in the power of doing good

that the true privilege of wealth and position lies.
1
Let him that sitteth at meat be as him

"
that
says our Saviour, who was at once Lord
serveth,"
of lords and Slave of slaves. To rule is to be great,

because to serve is to be great ; to have is happiness,
1 "
He wished to reign," says Wilhelm Meister, speaking of

Hamlet,
"
only that good men might be good without obstruction."

because to give is happiness.

"
It is more blessed
to give than to receive." And besides all this, it
is the tendency of superabundant riches to ruin the

spiritual independence of
man by making him the
slave of imaginary necessities. History everywhere
testifies to the social and national decay consequent
on the selfish accumulation and selfish use of wealth.

We must not find fault with productive expenditure;
nor even with such as promotes the moral, intel
lectual, and physical development of individuals.
For society is helped and strengthened by the multi
plication of healthy, intelligent, and moral citizens*
We are not Vandals or Puritans to deny the
refining pleasures of fine art to those who can
afford them nor are ;
we so narrow-minded as not
to see that there such a thing as useful leisure
is ;
and that the existence of a leisured class is not

necessarily a source of corruption, but might be and
ought to be a helpful factor in the general well-
being. It isagainst the enervating effects of luxury

that we protest against the indulgence of sensu
;
ality against the squandering of possibilities of

;
happiness and of true utilities, to no purpose or to

an evil
purpose.
Againto the poor, no less than to the rich, the
:
love of wealth is a source of misery. For not all

who are poor in fact, are poor in spirit and ;
grasping avarice is confined to no class of society.

No doubt where there is real insufficiency and desti
tution it is impossible apart from miracles of grace
but that the heart must be eaten up with cares,
or hardened with despair. On such poverty, the
fruitfulmother of vice, our Saviour has pronounced

no blessing but only a curse on
; those who are
responsible for it. But it is often the comfortable
poor who are most enslaved to a desire of accu
mulating ;
to a thrift that has become an end
itself, instead of reasonable means to a reasonable
end.
It was therefore needful
for us that our Saviour
by embracing poverty should make that state of life

more honourable and more lovable to His followers.
He knew that it was as difficult for a rich man to
use his riches unselfishly as for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle He knew that for the ;
majority it was far better, safer, happier to be

actually poor, to have less rather than more, and
to be content with that less. And that they might
be not only content but better pleased with that
lot, He made it His own. To the anti-social,
nothing is more hateful
selfish spirit of worldliness
than poverty none are more contemptible than the
;
poor and so, to condemn and defy the world and

;
to show His contempt for its judgment, our God

came among us as a poor man, labouring for His
daily bread in the sweat of His brow. He embraced
poverty and thereby made it something divine
Holy Poverty, the Bride of Christ :
With Christ she climbed the cross of woe,

When even Mary stayed below. 1
He shared it with His Blessed Mother, with

St. Joseph, with His Apostles, and with His closest
1
Dante, Paradise, xi.
friends. To them He says, speaking of that per

fection which counselled though not commanded
is :
If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast

"
and give to the poor . . . and come and follow

Me," the Son of Man who have not where to lay My
head. And letus notice in passing that the spirit
of poverty is not a spirit of economy or parsimony ;
not a spirit of keeping, but of giving. It sells all,
in order to give to the poor; after His example,
"who, though He was rich, yet for our sake He

became poor,"
and "
emptied Himself of His glory."
It isthe spirit of devotion, self-sacrifice, self-forget-

fulness the very antithesis and antidote of the love
;
of acquisition.
Again it was not well possible for our Saviour
:
to choose any but the harder lot and the lot of the
majority. Which of us could bear to go well-clad

or to feast sumptuously, or to make merry, if one
most near and dear to us were in destitution and
pain and poverty? Even though we could in no
way by self-privation relieve his misery, yet love
and sympathy would make the inequality intolerable
to us, and we should be restless and miserable till
we were on the same level as he. True, common-
sense has no justification of such a sentiment; but
there is something in us, thank God, much diviner
than common sense something that is a spark;
from that fire that burns in the Human Heart of

God Incarnate.was not merely to guide us,
It
to encourage us, to feel with us and for us, that our

great High Priest was tempted and tried with all
our temptations and trials but because love is ;
miserable until it shares the sorrows of the beloved ;
it feels itself false and disloyal if it enjoys any

advantage in solitude. Pauperes semper habetis vobis-
cum ; He knew there would always be poor while the
world lasted and, furthermore, that the poor would
;
always be in the majority. For, whatever econo

mists dream to the contrary, the rich will be few
and the poor will be many. But our Saviour was
necessarily with the majority; for the few are for
the many and not the many for the few ; the rich
are for the poor and not the poor for the rich the ;
gifted for the needy and not the needy for the gifted.
Again : He had come on a mission of repara
tion to make atonement for the sins of the world.
He saw, as none other saw, the torrents of iniquity
and corruption that streamed from this one source
of avarice or the selfish love of wealth and there ;
fore, despising what the world loved and loving

what the world despised, He willingly and freely
chose to be poor rather than to be rich.
And the Church, His Spouse, has faithfully
guarded His doctrine in this matter of poverty and ;
she proclaims it not only by word of mouth, but

by the continual object-lesson given by the pro
fessors of voluntary poverty. She allows and en
courages her children, if only they are called thereto
by God, to make obligatory on themselves by vow
what is of counsel and free to all to seal a contract
;
with poverty and to make her their bride as she

was the bride of Christ.
Let us pause to notice that the sacredness of the
marriage tie and the specific distinctiveness of
conjugal love depends on the bond being irrevocable

at will and perpetual. So he who gives himself to
poverty irrevocably, who locks the fetter and casts
away the key, loves her with a devotion far higher in
kind and degree than he who embraces her at will or
takes her on trial or with the possibility of a divorce
in view. And so of religious vows in general. It is
excellent to practise continence or obedience but ;
far more excellent to vow oneself to the practice.

The very idea of a vow is somewhat discordant
with many of the dominant notions and sentiments
of modern life. Any voluntary sacrifice of liberty
is looked upon with suspicion as savouring of
fanaticism. But this suspicion is at root akin to
that which looks askance at every form of asceticism
or self-imposed mortification on the grounds that
what God has given us to enjoy He cannot desire
or intend us to forego a fallacy which destroys not
only mortification, but all self-restraint and morality.
It is no violation of our liberty to be bound by the
law of God to do right instead of wrong; nor is it
a violation of our liberty when by a self-imposed
law we bind ourselves to do better instead of well.
Nothing curtails our liberty but what restricts our
power of doing well or doing better. There is no
such prejudice against the notion of a vow where
the service of God is not in question. History and
romance and poetry abound with instances of heroic
self-devotion to noble causes and enterprises sealed
by vow, which elicit unqualified admiration from all

who do not wish to be thought void of right senti
ment. Who will find fault with the hero of a recent
fancy sketch of considerable merit, who vowed his

1
life and labour to the task of bridging a mountain
torrent which had for years exacted its toll of

human life ? We are told how he toiled day after
"
day, and the pains of loneliness and poverty were

ever with him but the pain which had brought the
;
man s vow to birth spurred him on and helped him

to that endurance which is always heroism." And
then we read how later he awoke to the existence
of life s pleasures and of his own latent capacities
for enjoying them which his vow had doomed to
death how he had mingled with his fellow-men
;
"
with women too he had seen their pleasures, their ;
hopes, their loves, their happy lives, and he craved

the same how his humanity revolted against
;
"
. . .
"
the self-appointed dreariness of his existence when

"
in one hour he realized that hope and love were

"
not for him. He had vowed vow that swallowed

a
up all
gentler obligations ;
which demanded all his
strength, all his days. He had paid out the . . .
grandest years of his life for an impulsive whim,

and what had he gained ? Was he obliged to yield
his own life the life he could never live again . . .
for the sake of a few lives in a far-off corner of the

land, a few pangs in hearts which had quite for
gotten him ? But ever the thought of his vow
"
comes to the assistance of his better self. He lives

the necessary wealth is realized at great sacrifice;
till
he returns to his country after years and on the ;
threshold of home he himself falls a victim to the

same cruel torrent whose foe he had sworn himself,
1
Man. By L. Q. Couch.
and ere he sinks overcome, his last gaze rests on

the bridge of his dreams, built easily long before by
the wealth of others.
Few perhaps will care to withhold their praise
from such an act of heroic self-devotion, even
though in the issue it was fruitless of the results
it aimed at so nobly and at such cost. But when
it is a question of devotion to the service of God,
to the salvation not of a few lives, but of many

souls, to the maintenance of the cardinal principles
of the Gospel and of the Eternal Life here and
hereafter, then and then only are men alarmed for
the interests of liberty and fearful of the encroach
ments of fanaticism. It has never been suggested
that there was aught of servility in the profession
of knighthood in the days of chivalry, when men
bound themselves
With such vows as is a shame
A man should not be bound by, yet the which
No man can keep.
Even though it be allowed that
The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself,

And being snapped,
We run more counter to the soul thereof
Than had we never sworn,
yet the fact that a profession is high and difficult,

and that therefore a greater percentage of those who
make it must fall short, and falling from a greater
height make greater havoc, in no way argues against
its lawfulness or rightfulness, unless we are prepared
to carry the principle of dishonourable safeness to

the repudiation of Christianity itself and of the

baptismal vows.
It is then in sympathy with the intentions and
motives of Jesus Christ that souls here and there
are drawn to the profession of poverty; loving it
first of all for His sake, that is, because He loved it
and made it His own ;

and then, more intelligently
entering into His mind, they love it for the sake of
mankind because it is the harder lot and the lot
of the many, and because they see that the love
of riches is the source of all kinds of social misery
and and therefore they give themselves to
injustice ;
the preaching of poverty by their life and example,

giving up freely the wealth, or the opportunities of
wealth, they might otherwise have lawfully enjoyed.
And finally, in a spirit of reparation for all the dis
honour done to God by the worship of money, they
do not merely accept the poverty that may be laid
upon them in the course of Providence contentedly
and cheerfully, but they freely make themselves poor
for ever.
But against all this doctrine economists urge
that the love of money, the
to procure desire
comforts and to raise the standard of enjoyments,
is the root of all good, that is, of all
progress and
increase of national wealth which eventually redounds
and poverty. Christ says:
to the relief of destitution
"
Sell all and give to the poor."

He desires that
poverty should be relieved. He regards it therefore
as an evil. He insists strongly and frequently on
this duty. Plainly, to find the causes of poverty
and to remove them is the truest and most universal
s
kind of charity. not be said, they urge, that

May it
with the evil of super

He is preoccupied rather
abundant that is,
riches, of capitalism, than with
the excellence of poverty that it is only freedom ;
from those particular evils which makes poverty

in spite of other evils of its own.
preferable,
Tothis there is but one answer. It is most true
or of comforts
that where there is no love of money
there will be industrial stagnation, much poverty,
and widespread destitution, and it would be wrong
to allow that Christianity is in any
and mischievous
way hostile to true and rational progress or that ;
the real interests of this world and the next were
incompatible.
The world is one thing and worldliness another.
The latter is an enemy of the interests of Christianity ;
the world.
but it is also an enemy of the interests of
of
For though Christianity seeks first the Kingdom
of that Kingdom
heaven, it seeks ipso facto the advent
and that God s will may be done on
upon earth ;
earth, in the individual, in

the family, in the State,
as it is in things eternal, as it "
in things temporal
is in heaven." Truth, justice, equity, charity, hap
what are these but the
piness, liberty, fraternity
will of God ? And what are they but the rational
world
ends of progress, the truest interests of this
Son
which God so loved that He gave His only to
die for it ?
"
What God has joined together let no

man put asunder." This world and the next are
The body is subordinate
related as body and soul.
to the soul ;
but it is not its enemy, not even its
its helper, its friend.

slave, but its companion,
Both, we believe, are to be glorified together; and

we also believe that in some undreamt-of
way the
kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms
of God and of His Christ and that a renewed and
;
purified heaven and earth will supervene upon

the old.
It is absurd and narrow-minded to regard
modern progress and civilization as being the pure
result either of Christian or of anti-Christian
prin
ciples and tendencies. It is a mixed product con
taining much good and much evil
inextricably
intertwined, as are the roots of wheat and tares in
the Master s field. All that is really good in it is
the fruit of the eternal and necessary
principles of
the Gospel all that is evil is from the selfish
;
spirit
of worldliness. Were it possible to root out the
wheat would grow more freely and fruit
tares, the
fully. What chokes and retards civilization is the
same weed of worldliness which strangles the Gospel
and forbids its full development and expansion.
What do socialists and individualists revile one
another with, except with the disregard of
Gospel
principles; with avarice, with luxury, with injustice,
with tyranny ?
Many glib talkers are zealous to prove that the
Church s influence must be altogether in the interests
of progress and civilization ; but
they never pause
to define the nature of true
progress and civilization,
or to question whether what
passes for such really
deserves the name. That we live in an
age of com
mercial and industrial progress cannot be denied;
.but it must not be assumed that the best .and truest
wealth is material, or that the multiplication of
comforts and conveniences is the measure of culture.

We cannot determine the nature and direction of
true progress till we are agreed about the nature of
man, the purpose of human life, the character and
conditions of true happiness. If this world is the
best we have hope to for ;
if
if it is our brief home ;
and affliction are unmitigated evils;

pain, sorrow,
if our only wisdom is to gather, multiply, and
hoard
whatever little enjoyment can be crowded into a few
it cannot be denied that the
years, then, indeed,
current notion of progress and civilization is satis
is chiefly a school of suffering
factory. But if this life
in which man is taught to master himself and to
endure all things for the love of truth and principle
and right, for the love,
that is, of God and God s
cause if sorrow, pain, and affliction are evils only
;
under certain conditions, but are as often, or more

of our spiritual
often, the very food and medicine
and moral development; if conscience, and faith,
and divine love, if purity, unselfishness, patience,
meekness, compassion be the highest exercise of
the civilization
man highest faculties, then indeed
s
which the Church could encourage and sympathize

with would be very different from the frankly godless
and animal civilization of our times.
We do not deny that amid the prevalence of
and motives, the Power that "
grosser principles
makes for unceasingly to
Righteousness"
strives
assert itself and to mitigate the shameless impetus

of the rush for comforts. But in proportion as a
and ideal,
tendency is downward rather than upward
it
strong, and universal and persistent; so that
is
from the very nature of things an ideal civilization

is something
indefinitely far away, and, therefore,
although the Church is not only the ally but in
some sense the mother of true civilization, and
of whatever good there is in the
present civili
zation, yet historically speaking she has always
been, and will always be, at war with that which
calls itself civilization and progress, but is not. She
can never acquiesce in the view that as selfishness
is, so it ought to be the dominant motive of human
conduct, upon which alone we can calculate, with

scientific certainty. She will not purchase the
stability of civilization by contenting herself with
aims that are safe and facile because
they are low.
She prefers to fail for ever rather than lower her
standards one inch. For she knows How far high "
failure overleaps the bound of low successes."

Let it be granted then that if the Gospel forbids
us to seek more than bare sufficiency of food and
raiment ; or to make provision for the future ;
or to
compete with others in the race of life ;
if its ideal
is a life in the desert apart from all human interest :
if itinculcates mortification of every sense and

every
affection as an end in itself in the
spirit of Buddhistic
pessimism ;
if it teaches us to despise the great
drama of human history as an unmeaning tale told
"
by an idiot" as though He who cares for the

individual life cared naught for the life of cities and
nations if all this be the essential tendency of
Christianity, then indeed it is the enemy of civiliza
tion and progress. But this is an ignorant travesty
27 8 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
of the Gospel which has never been accepted by

certain
the Catholic Church, however favoured by
heresies which have arisen within her and broken off
from her. We are forbidden to seek temporal things

seek
first,
that is as the profane and worldly-minded
them ends and not as means
them, who regard as ;
we are forbidden not foresight and prudence but

in these matters; we are
anxiety and fretfulness
forbidden to advance ourselves at the expense
and
to the injury of others; to seek our own good
at the
sacrifice of the common good; we

are forbidden
even in temporal matters to seek the lower

in pre
necessities and enjoyments; to

ference to higher
and luxurious, wasteful
indulge in senseless display
all that degrades and
sensuality we ;
are forbidden
enervates the individual and thereby weakens society;
we are forbidden such aggrandizement as causes
lower members of the
atrophy and anemia in the
and plethora in the
body-social, and hypertrophy
of social decay and death.
higher a double cause
Put nowhere does the Gospel teach us to despise
s which used in due
any good creature of God
measure and season promotes human happiness and
leads us to serve and praise Him better than
before.
If a corrupt and luxurious civilization deadens and

of
debases the soul; yet it cannot be denied that
itself civilization tends to the development of man s
faculties, and thereby renders him a more

spiritual
instrument of the Divine praise. Even know
fitting
ledge has deservedly
come into certain disrepute in
an age where it is worshipped merely as eventually
comforts. But this perver-
productive of multiplied
sion does notmake it less true that knowledge feeds

and ministers to wisdom and that extended know
;
ledge is one of the principal fruits of civilization.

Civilization is a good thing one of God s helps to
;
salvation ;
it is therefore a grace to be sought and
laboured for. Starvation, destitution, suffering are
not ends in themselves, and if, when endured or
embraced in obedience to God s will, they are means
to the very highest end, yet charity bids us impera
tively relieve them in others, however gladly we

might put up with them ourselves. Fight these
miseries how we the very nature of things
will, yet
will always secure their prevalence, for we are but as
children building sand walls against the tide.
But there thank God, an unselfish love of
is,
riches that can more than supply all that energy

which is requisite for progress and civilization. As
it is, when a man works for his family he usually
works harder than for himself alone. But it is the

tendency of Christian charity to throw down the
barriers of family and clan, and without lessening
the measure of our love for our immediate kin, or
destroying its due gradation, to allow our affec
tions to stretch indefinitely to the furthest limit of
humanity. Indeed the extent to which the wavelets

circle outdepends on the force of the central dis
turbance and it is the deepest love that spreads
;
most widely with least diminution of intensity. Our

Blessed Saviour, whose love reached to every son of
Adam, past, present, and future, loved His Mother
and special friends with an intensity proportioned
to the same infinite reach of His world-wide love.
2 8o THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
Is there notenough evidence in the past and present,

of the existence of nobler and wider hearts which
have preferred the general good to their own of ;
men who have, like the Good Shepherd, laid down

their life for their flock ;
is there not enough heroic
unselfishness even now in the world to bid us hope
that what family-love can do, a love of humanity
fed by Christian faith and hope and charity may
effect one day more abundantly ? As the false philo
sophies of pagandom prepared the world to receive
the truths after which they were vainly groping;
so the pseudo-humanitarianism of our day seems
to be making possible a fuller declaration of the
Christian doctrine of fraternity and love than would
have been listened to last century.
Therefore as a man who understands that to rule
is to serve, may ambition rule simply out of love of the
many and a desire to serve them ;

so a man may
ambition wealth just because it increases his power
of doing good, of perfecting himself and those who
are connected with him in due gradation from the
nearest to the furthest, within a sphere which is
increased by every accession to his riches.

In no sense, therefore, is the love of personal
poverty hostile to civilization. It is compatible
with the love of riches; provided this be an unselfish

love. Plainly it is compatible with a keen desire to
get money in order to give to the poor. Let him "
that stole," says St. Paul, "steal no more; but rather

let him labour, working with his hands, that he may
l
have wherewith to give to him that need
"
is in ;
1
Ephes. iv.
lethim no longer seek wealth selfishly at the expense

of others, but let him for the love of others get all
he can by honest endeavour in order to make himself
useful and not hurtful to society. All wealth that is
reasonably and unselfishly used is for the general

good and redounds to the relief of the poor. Yet,
as has been said, it is easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
use his wealth unselfishly. With God it is possible ;
and Christianity has multiplied and will yet multiply

these miracles of grace. Still we are far off from
the ideal and the poor
; not the destitute will be
if
with us always. The love of the poor will lead us

not only to individual, but to corporate and social
It will urge us to study the
efforts for their relief.
laws economics, to seek out the causes and
of
remedies of want and suffering. And the love of
poverty, what is it after all but the love of the poor
that compassion for the weaker members of the
body-social which should counteract the corruptive
tendency of competition.
By embracing the state of the poor, the Religious
of the Catholic Church keep before the world His
example who was poor Himself and has chosen the
poor to be His representatives and they choose
;
what He chose, they love what He loved not

blindly, for love of being like Him exteriorly; but
intelligently, for the same reasons as He being ;
like Him in their mind and in their heart.

II.
11
could say the canticle but those hundred and
No man
forty-four thousand who were purchased from the earth, for
whithersoever He
they are virgins. These follow the Lamb
goeth." Apoc. xiv. 3, 4.
The second great vice of the world is sensual

licence and impurity. We need scarcely enlarge on
so unsavoury a theme. Commenting on the words :
"Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the
sin of the world," some have thought that this

sin of the world is nothing else but impurity.
Be that as it may, it is certain that it has at
all times been the commonest form of sin ;
and
that those who pass through life untouched by its
contamination are few and far between. We

know, moreover, that it is the gravest and most
hindrance to
persistent of social evils ; the chiefest
collective happiness. It is not only the conditions
of civilization but the exigencies of Nature herself
that demand restraint in this most difficult matter,
and that, for most men, and at most times. It is
not our intention here to explain this apparent
simply to take it as we find
but it.
anomaly,
Look at it how we will, we see that restraint is
one of the necessities of human life, as much as
labour, or sorrow, or death.

It is the harder lot and the lot of the many ;
and
He who would have His friends feel for that lot and
make it their us, not as an
own, came among
example of conjugal perfection, but as a virgin, born
of a Virgin ;
His foster-father, a virgin ;
His herald,
the friend of His bosom, a virgin His ;
heavenly body-guard, virgins virgins not in mind

only, but in body. It was that He might sanctify
and exalt virginity that He embraced it and gave it

toHis choicest friends to embrace so that a weak ;
and impure world might be strengthened to honour

and reverence virginity to see in it the very crown
;
of human dignity, the absolute mastery of the spirit

over the most imperious exactions of the flesh to ;
emulate it and approach as near to it as possible by

perfect chastity and spotlessness according to each
one s state of life or even to embrace it, if called
;
thereto, as a higher and holier state than that of
matrimony. For higher and holier to serve

it is
the many than to serve the few to forsake home;
and kindred for the Gospel and the Kingdom of God

on earth, and thereby to find a hundred-fold even in
the present life.
Here, as in the case of poverty, Christ took what

was bitter and sweetened it by making it His own.
For the love of being like Christ and His Mother
and His friends, thousands in every age have
embraced freely and gladly that hardship which is
imposed upon so many whether they will it or no.
And still more do they resemble Him when they do
so for like motives, amongst which, though not
principal, is "compassion for the multitude." With
what face can the wealthy preach contentment to
the poor ? and with what face could the Church
preach continence to the world, did she not practise
it in the persons of her
priests and religious ?
Amarried clergy may preach chastity by word of
mouth, but not by the most effectual method of
preaching. By marriage a man does not overcome

in the conflict, but simply withdraws from it.
Plainly the mere fact of marriage does not infuse

the difficult virtue of chastity into one who was
previously unchaste. Indeed, there is some fear
that even matrimonial chastity will prove too severe
a yoke for such a one. One who was a coward
while the battle raged does not instantly become
brave because peace is proclaimed. He may talk
more valiantly, even as a father, forgetful of his own
unmarried days, may treat the delinquencies of his
son with the austerity of a Stoic.
Always and everywhere, even in the most
corrupted ages Church has preached an
the
object-lesson to world
the by the existence of
her voluntary celibates of both sexes, who by vow
have wedded themselves to the conflict for life.
Were it not for such examples men might well say
that the yoke of chastity was impossible, as many do
say, who like to think that the abuses of certain
times and places prevail everywhere among professed
celibates, only better concealed. On the other hand,
it is no less falsely said that they who fly to religion
or to the altar are as cowards who flee from the
danger to safety; rather they stand firm, that
learning the tactics of the enemy they may be able

to help others and, having suffered themselves,
;
pity the sufferings of others. God, says St. Paul,

"comforts us in all our tribulations, that we may be
able to comfort them who are in any trouble with
the same comfort wherewith we ourselves are com-
forted of Nay, more, if we may believe the

God."
the law of Christ

" "
fulfil
mystics, they by bearing
the burden of others even as the Ransomers of old
;
who as free hostages embraced the captivity which

would have endangered the faith of their weaker
brethren. They do not escape temptation, but they
face it and bear it. And, moreover, it is in a spirit
of reparation to God s injured honour that they
willingly forego what is lawful in order to make"
atonement, in union with Christ, for the lawless
indulgence and sensuality of others, and to turn
away God anger from many a sinful city or state,
s
as the ten just men needed for the salvation of

Sodom.
The more we understand the social and practical
importance of an idea, the more shall we be convinced
that, apart from all Christian and supernatural con
siderations whatever, the mere existence of voluntary
celibates and voluntary mendicants is of incalculable
importance that as a living object-lesson they drive

;
home truths simply and effectually, in a way which

no amount of verbal insistence could succeed in
doing. Hence, as we saw before, the spirit of
worldliness is socially destructive, while the Catholic
and eternal principles of the Gospel are conservative
and progressive.
III.
"
He came to Nazareth and was subject to them."
St. Luke ii. 51.
Once more ;
Christ came into the world where
unqualified independence, self-direction, self-govern
ment were worshipped as ends in themselves ;
where
obedience was viewed as at best a necessary evil
the less of it, the better. He knew that each member
happier, and more useful
of the body was healthier, in
its own place; in subjection to the superior members
and to the head ; in concord and agreement with its

fellow-members that independence, separation, iso
;
lation, meant death death for the intellect, for the

;
heart and affections; for all that belongs to man

as a rationaland free agent. Neither in home or in
Church or in State could there be progress or
city, in
happiness without order, harmony,
and subjection.
He knew also the strength of man s self-assertive
instincts, useful and needful when restrained and

instincts and
pressed into the service of higher
social life when suffered
principles, but destructive of
to run riot in the form of lawless, self-regarding
ambition, grasping at the reins of government for
purposes of self-aggrandizement and self-glorifica
tion caring for private gain, not for the
;
common
It is one and the same anti-social spirit
good.
which manifests itself as tyranny in the ruler and as
insubordination in the subject omnes queer entes qua
sua, sunt et non qua sunt Jesu Christi seeking them
selves and not the community ;
and in seeking
themselves, losing themselves ; even as they who

lose themselves and suppress their egoism find them
selves again.
For it is in proportion to the perfection of
the social organism that the individual can enjoy
perfect liberty and full mental and moral develop
ment. He that seeketh his life shall lose it but
"
he that loseth his life for My sake shall find It it."
was, then, the spirit of obedience that needed to be

cultivated obedience inspired by charity, that is,
;
by common good, of the interests of Jesus

love of the
Christ the spirit that obeys no created will, but
;
only the will of Him who has care for the whole.
It is in obeying rather than in ruling that the
majority of mankind are tempted by the anti-social,

self-assertive spirit and though the temptation is
;
far stronger in the case of those who rule, yet

it was to lighten the lot of the many that our
Saviour came, not merely to point out the expe
diency and necessity of obedience by word of
mouth, but to teach us to love obeying for His sake ;
to prefer, should it be God s will, to obey rather

than to rule; to sacrifice more liberty rather
than less to the common good to look on pre ;
eminence and authority as in some sense the less

Divine and sanctified lot.
In the same spirit and for the same motives the
religious of the Catholic Church have by their free
and perpetual self-devotion to a life of obedience,
maintained in all ages the true social principle so
needed for the healing of the nations. They
have furnished an object-lesson in the doctrine
of obedience as ever taught by the Christian

Religion.
Doubtless the ideal society would be one in
which the common good and greatest interest of all
would demand the fullest development of each,
securing to the several members all the conditions
requisite for the perfect realization of all their latent
capacities one in which charity would entail no
;
suffering or sacrifice. But such a society is to be

found only in the Heavenly Jerusalem, never upon
the earth, though it is a standard of approximation.
All human society, secular or ecclesiastical, entails
sacrifice and self-repression upon its members ; nor
has any individual just cause of complaint if in
many ways his liberties are restricted, his talent
injured and left idle, his capacities squandered,

sometimes through force of inevitable circumstances,
sometimes through the blunderings or the faults of
those in command, sometimes through the selfish
ness and blindness of his fellow-members. All these
inconveniences are inseparable from our finite con
ditions and by submitting to these, out of deference
;
to the common advantage and public peace, a man

realizes what is best and noblest among all his
capacities. Not but that he may and should vindicate

himself by all constitutional methods, and never
submit to any violation of his conscience but that, ;
when things point to the duty of self-repression,

all
he should yield himself courageously. It is this law-

loving self-denial, which is the strength of armies
and nations, and of the Church of Christ, whereas
it is the decay of this principle and the confusion of
licence with liberty which is rotting every European

state to-day.
These, then, are the three counsels of the Gospel;

the three nails, as some will have it, whereby Religious
are fastened to the Cross of Christ, and held up to
the derision of this foolish, near-sighted world.
"
Near-sighted," for, as we have said, all true

progress and enlightenment which the world has so
far seen is traceable to the prevalence of these three
great principles, to the silent preaching of which
Religious devote themselves in life-long sacrifice ;
while all the failure and defeat which progress has

met with is due to their neglect.
We can hardly expect those outside the Church

of the Saints to enter into the secrets of the saints,
or to understand how, in the eyes of every true
Catholic, poverty, chastity, and obedience are looked
upon as the better part, the luckier lot as beautiful ;
and lovable for their own sake for the sake of ;
Christ and His saints who embraced them for the ;
sake of the multitudes of mankind to whom the

harder lot has fallen. less can we expect
Still
them to enter into the more mystical and esoteric
principles which, apart from all other reasons,
would make the way of the Counsels the better
way. Yet even outsiders have recently discovered
that religious vows and even religious Orders
are exceedingly useful and economical institutions ;
that it is desirable to have people banded together

and organized for the prosecution of certain philan
thropic and charitable purposes, who should be
T
2 go THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
content to receive for themselves only strict neces

saries from a common fund, and not look for any
salary or remuneration. So far voluntary poverty is
an excellent thing. Likewise a married clergy is
rather an expensive institution, and one absorbing

in family cares a large fraction of the available
clerical energy of the country. And as for obedience,
of course some must obey, some must be
just as
poor and wea^.y and unfortunate. For what would
become of the Government, the army, the navy, the
family, without obedience ? And who does not
see that the masses should be kept in subjection,
and that ideas of liberty and equality are fraught
with danger to public security ? Use, economy,
convenience, these are the non-Catholic standards
and tests. Not poverty for poverty s sake; nor
chastity for chastity s sake nor obedience for
;
obedience sake ;
not out of reverential love of the
lot which Christ and His saints have made their
own and embraced and sanctified ;

not for any
sympathy with Christ s love of humanity, for whose

well-being, here and hereafter, these three counsels
are so needful not for any scorn and contempt of
;
the spirit of worldliness which nailed Christ to the

Cross, and crucifies His little ones daily by the
million, the mortal enemy of God and of humanity;
but for narrow, economical, mercantile reasons such
as appeal to souls from which all that is ideal,
spiritual, catholic, eternal,
has been driven by three
centuries of egoism in religion, in politics, in philo
sophy, and in morality.
IV.
"
Mary hath chosen the best part."

St. Luke x. 42.
Whatever toleration the world may have learnt

for the religious profession, it is only in so far as
it secures conditions favourable to a life of active
usefulness and practical charity. For the higher
life of contemplation it has rarely a good word to
say. St. Simeon on his pillar, the hermits of the

Thebaid are its classical examples of perverted
piety and of the early defection of Christianity from
the philanthropic and utilitarian spirit of its Founder.
Ut quid perditio hcec ? Why this waste of energy and
time which might be turned to good account and
given to the poor ? How is society or how is the
Church the better of such an existence ? or how is
itcompatible with the very conception of charity,

which means association, co - operation, mutual
service ?
Here again, though particular orders and insti

tutions are contingent and transitory, yet the
greater excellence of the contemplative life, viewed
in the abstract, is a constant and unchangeable part
of the Church steaching. For, indeed, the eternal
life of Heaven isa life of contemplation and praise;
and man touches his highest here on earth when
for some brief moment he anticipates Heaven
and dwells in loving wonder on the features of
Divine Truth. All the labour of man done under
the sun is directed to some few spells of restful
contemplation and enjoyment, which make life
2Q2 THE WAY OF THE COUNSELS.
worth the living; even the pleasures and amuse

ments of the most degraded and perverse are found
in the last analysis to consist in gazing upon or
witnessing something that interests the mind or the

imagination but only when our taste is schooled to
;
delight the
in beholding of God and of things
Divine do we attain the end of our creation. As
each single soul must be stifled to death if from
time to time it does not rise to the surface for a
breath of the upper atmosphere ;

so it is needful for
the corporate life of the Church and of the com
munity that there should be those who, being fitted
by natural gifts and supernatural grace, are set apart
for the direct cultus and service of truth, and for the
exercise of Divine praise whose office is to keep
;
the sacred lamp burning while others immersed in

active charity slumber and sleep for very weariness
and heaviness of the eyes. Strange that an acute
thinker of our day, 1 one keenly alive to the organic
conception of society, should not have seen that the
division of labour involved in separation of con
templative from active life is a consequence of
that very conception. St. Simeon Stylites in the
desert, was as member of the Christian
actively a
community as St. PauL By the perfection of each
part the whole is perfected, and he who recognizes
himself as part of a whole often serves the whole
best by being rather than by doing. If in no other
way, at least in proclaiming by his very existence

that man s last end, his highest work here and
hereafter, is eternal rest, the love of truth, the
1
Dr. E. Caird, Master of Balliol.
contemplation and praise of God, a work which

produces nothing, which is worth doing for its own
sake, and for whose sake alone all other work is
profitable, were it only to keep this idea alive in an

insane world of aimless rush and unrest, the pro
fessed contemplative in these days would be in one
sense the most valuable and useful member of
society.
Obviously the contemplative life, even more than
the religiouslife, is an exceedingly rare vocation,
demanding many natural gifts of no common sort

as a basis for grace to work upon while the needs
;
of the Church in a given locality or age might

plainly require the sacrifice of these aptitudes to
more urgent calls of duty. There is a common
fallacy about equality which has done much harm
to the Church by supposing that because all are
equally called to be perfect in their own line, there

fore all are called to and capable of equal perfection.
It is as untrue to say every one can be a saint or
a religious or a contemplative, as to say he can be

a hero or poet or a genius. The Church is
always
warring, by her legislation, with the indiscretion of
those whose haste and inexperience would hurry
them to profess willingness for prison and death
when they are not capable of following even from
afar, and still more with the indiscretion of those
who, for one foolish reason or another, would play
the part of the Holy Ghost to others in the matter
of vocation. Yet, while readily admitting the call
to be rarer than is supposed in practice, we cannot
but justify the judgment of the Catholic Church in
her esteem for the profession of the Evangelical

Counsels, as well as for the higher life of con
templation.
It is not then to new social systems that we can
trust for the remedy of those evils which weigh upon
the public conscience of these times. It is to the
character of the people before all else. Doubtless

this in its turn is conditioned by environments and ;
it may well be questioned if under the existing social

organization any universal amelioration through
religious influence is possible. Still whenever such
favourable conditions are secured it is religion and

religion alone nay, the Catholic religion alone, that
will be able to effect and maintain that elevated
moral tone which is essential for all veritable
progress. It is by her continual insistence on the

three Evangelical Counsels, illustrated and brought
home to the public mind by the lives and examples
of her Religious that she will keep alive that flame
of charity kindled by Him who is at once the Light
"
of the nations and the Glory of His people Israel."

THE DIVINE PRECEPT.
"
Whoso loveth not God how loveth he his neighbour as

himself, since neither doth he love himself?
"
How then doth Christ love us but to the

"
end that we
may be able to reign with Christ ? To this same end let us
love one another." St. Augustine, Tract 83, in Joan.
"
MY Beloved is as a bundle of myrrh." Our Divine

Saviour is that same "
Beloved," laid in our bosom

to heal the corruption of our affections ; to purify
the gold of human love from all its dross and defile
ment ;
He comes to lay His Heart against ours, and
to heal them ; not to freeze them or still them into
death, but to calm and regulate their wild wayward
pulsations, to teachthem a rhythm from Heaven ;
from the Heart of God Himself. This was His
precept, thesummary not that we of His doctrine ;
should merely love one another that was com

manded from the beginning, when the human heart
was first moulded but that our love should be after
the pattern of His, Sicut dilexi vos As I have "
loved you." It was a method and manner of loving

He came to teach us a devoted, a passionate love, ;
yet restrained, severe, and seeming cruel ; a suffering

and a dying love, which could find no exercise, no
expression, no relief, but in pain; not mere y in
serviceable and useful pain, but at times in pain for
296 THE DIVINE PRECEPT.
the mere sake of expression because pain is the

;
very language of love, which even God Himself had

to speak before He could persuade our hearts.
Seeing the oceans of sin that deluge the world

through the perversions of human affections, men
might well be excused for thinking that the love of
God and of creatures were incompatible and antago
nistic, except so far as the latter were loved not
spontaneously, or for themselves, but only from a

sense of duty to God. Yet our Lord will have no
such safe charity, but bids us at His word launch
out into the deep, and face the peril inseparable
from our lot. Et Verbum caro factum est, Divine
love took flesh and embodied itself in a throbbing
human heart, that we might learn what our affec
tions may rise to, by the infusion of the Holy Spirit.
The object of His love is man, not the soul, but the
whole man, body and soul, the whole nature which
He assumed, in which He suffered, in which He was
transfigured and glorified. And He loves us, not
for any merely extrinsic reason, but for the very
lovableness which is inherent in us, which He
Himself has given us for every participation of His
;
own Divine excellence and beauty. When we think

how infinitesimal this is, we might wonder how His
love is so great but we no longer wonder when we
;
remember that the infinite force with which each

particle of created goodness is drawn back to the
Creator s bosom as to its origin and end, is the
force of God s self-love. Even when we see what
God sees, we cannot see it in the way He sees it,
nor therefore love it in the way He loves it. Greater
THE DIVINE PRECEPT. 297
minds and hearts are penetrated and rapt away by

what to others seems ordinary, perhaps common "
and unclean," and each one feels that his soul s inner
growth is shown in a keener appreciation of the un
noticed goodness that lies round him on every side.
The vulgar can see no beauty except in perpetual
novelties and sensational surprises they must go;
abroad while the trained eye and delicate affection

;
see delights everywhere without end. Therefore

God s love of finite goodness is infinite
though not
;
in every way, as is His love of His own infinite

goodness. He delights infinitely in those beauties
of mind and heart and form which stir our feeble
affections to their roots and, moreover, He who
;
looks into the darkest corners of the soul often sees

there a thousand lovablenesses hidden from us. Nor
in any two are these beauties combined in the same
assortment or
proportion, that they should be
classed together and loved under some universal
kind. He knows His sheep individually, and calls
each by its that is, He draws it to Himself
name
in its own individual way, and no two in the same
way.
The Father Himself loves us by the very neces
sity of His nature. He was free to create us, to
give us more or less lovableness but having made ;
us lovable, He is riot free to do other than love us ;
for He must love His least

image as necessarily as
He loves Himself. And the Incarnate Son, whose
human will and heart is dominated by that same
infinite love, and thrills in the most perfect and
intelligent sympathy therewith, loves not merely

2 g8 THE DIVINE PRECEPT.
what the Father loves, blindly, extrinsically, but

loves it for the same reason, looking on us with the
same eyes, with an understanding, sympathetic love.
Sicut dilexi vos, This is how He loved us, this is
how we are to love one another, according to His
precept, and His commandment
is not grievous.
Many speak as though the Divine love of our

neighbour differed from the natural, in that the
former is wholly extrinsic and relative, the latter
intrinsicand absolute. God has bid us (they say)
to despiseand put aside that love whose motive is
inherent lovableness, and to foster that only which
has no reference to intrinsic qualities. God might
have ordered us to love so many stones, for some
mysterious reason or other, connected with His
service and we should have been bound to love
;
them (or rather, to act as if we loved them, for real

love essentially supposes intrinsic attractiveness in
its object). And were He capriciously to change His
mind, and order us to love stocks instead of stones,

we ought to have no difficulty in at once transferring
to them whatever exterior courtesies we had pre
viously been bestowing on the stones. "No difficulty,"
because there was no real personal affection to
uproot, whose only possible soil is inherent lovable-
ness. This is what they call
"
spiritual," as opposed
to or "natural
"carnal,"
"
love our parents

love. To
"
spiritually," means, with them, to disregard the

natural instinct of filial affection, and to pay them
only such service and duty as we are bound to give
to any stock or stone that God has told us to love ;
not because it is what "
nature
"
prompts us to do,
but because God has ordered it for some reason of

His own. This, they say, is what is meant by loving
God alone, and all things else only for His sake.
We are to look on them simply as fetiches, as
arbitrary tokens, withdrawing from them any love
they might absorb into themselves that we may
transfer it all and so loving them
to their Creator,
for His sake that, without any change in them, we
should be equally ready to hate them for His sake,
should He tell us so to do. "Whatsoever you did to
the least of these you did it unto Me," is interpreted
to mean that fraternal charity is purely relative, a
fiction as far as our brethren are concerned that ;
God is its sole object, just as the obeisance made to

the Queen s empty throne is accepted as personal to
herself.
The meaning, however, is not so much Forget :
them, and think of Me, as Forget Me, and think

:
of them as is plain from the wondering reply of

;
the just Lord, when saw we Thee hungry, and

:
fed Thee ? It is the same spirit which is embodied

in the command, "Weep not for Me, but weep for
yourselves and for your children."
Wedo not say that this doctrine of extrinsic
charity has ever been so explicitly formulated as
we have formulated it here. But holy men and
even canonized saints have at times unconsciously
implied its principles, both in practice and in
precept. Nor is this scandalous or wonderful,
to any one who understands rightly the tedious
process by which the golden grains of truth are

sundered and sifted from the chaff of errors
300
THE DIVINE PRECEPT.
and fallacies. Still less, when we find these
same holy men just as often implying in precept,

and far more in practice, principles diametrically
with those we complain
opposite and inconsistent
of. For it is only when they
are explicitly separated
and stated that principles can be judged and com
pared. Not one of the Saints was ever sanctified

of the incorrect
or sanctified others in consequence
of them. As a matter of
principles, but
in spite
fact we find that all the greater Saints were men of

who drew others to
large and tender affections,
them by the cords of Adam who,;
however imper
fectly they may
have analyzed and formulated their
the very instinct of
love, loved truly and directly by
not necessarily a
the Holy Ghost. For a Saint is
philosopher, any
more than a philosopher is a Saint.
is it wonderful that in so subtle
a matter
Nor
much inaccuracy should creep in for the very words
;
are the
in which the erroneous theory is embodied,
of Christ and of His and of such a
words Apostles,
master of spiritual things as St. Ignatius of Loyola.
words but heaven
Evidently they are ambiguous ;
than
and earth are not more distant and opposed
the two meanings of which they are susceptible.
of the dualism of
One is implication the doctrine
by
Zoroaster, and of the Gnostics and Manicheans,
been regarded as
which in its open form has ever
the most pestilential error, but which, as the
of a truth, has ever and again
parasitic corruption
itself with the ascetic teachings
subtly interwoven
and doctors, and has sprung up from time
of saints
to time to choke the good seed
and impede its
fruitfulness and vigour. The other is the Catholic

teaching of reason and revelation, the canon by
which other teaching must at length stand or
all
fall. Dualism gives us practically two gods a ;
principle of good and a principle of evil. Spirit, it
tells us, work of God matter is the work of

is the ;
the devil. The conflict between these two, ending

in the victory of spirit and the subjugation of matter,
constitutes the drama of creation. This is only the
perversion of a great truth, a perversion slight in itself,
but portentous in its consequences. too hold that We
the subjugation of matter to spirit and of spirit to
God consummation towards which all things
is the
move. But matter, no less than spirit, is God s
dear creature and as spirit is not destroyed, but
;
perfected and elevated by its subjection to divinity;

so matter is transfigured, glorified, and exalted by
its impregnation with spirit. God s conflict with
matter and spirit is not that of an enemy, but of a
parent with a wayward child whom he chastens in
love Quern diligit, castigat. Evil spirits and evil
men play their part in this work of evolution and
purgation, but only under the permission and direc
tion of God s most wise and loving, though
mysterious, providence. Seeing how large a part
the subjugation of the flesh to the spirit plays in
Christian asceticism, and how the great bulk of
men s more patent sins are due to the insubordina
tion of the animal passions, it is a natural exaggera
tion of the truth to suppose that the interests of
the body are wholly and always hostile to those of
the soul ; that spirituality requires the death of the
senses and emotions and that because the pre

;
eminence of mind over matter is good, therefore it

may be with advantage carried to infinity. This
seems to be Plato s view, who regards the body
simply as the prison-house of the soul, a mere
impediment to its expansion, a hindrance altogether,
a help in no sense though it must be confessed
;
that he credits the pure spirit with an emotional

fervour and passionateness which an acuter analysis
recognizes to be dependent on the senses. How
great an influence Plato had with St. Augustine and
other Christian writers, and St. Augustine, in his
turn, upon the Western Church is notorious. Still
Aristotle, as interpreted by Aquinas, supplies a
salutary antidote to whatever insidious poison may
have been imbibed in regard to this matter. His
doctrine is sympathy with the mysteries
altogether in
of Christian revelation touching the origin, office,
redemption, and glorification of the body. It is not
in the extinction of the feelings and passions and
instincts, but in their culture and restraint that
man s spirit reaches its fullest development. As
body and complementary principles of our
soul are
substantial nature, so senses and intelligence, imagi
nation and reason, feeling and volition, are co-
principles of our perfect operation the one material, ;
the other formal ; the one embodying, the other

embodied ;
neither perfect, except so far as duly
proportioned to the other. Evil is not matter, or
anything absolute, but a discord, a disproportion ;
and to secure concord and proportion is the aim of

Catholic and Christian asceticism, so far as it is
identified with moral training and perfection. But,

as we have said above, it is easy to misunderstand
and pervert the true principle of mortification so as
to fall into implicit gnosticism. Christianity insists
on chastity, honours celibacy, approves fasting and
bodily penance. Gnosticism does the same, but on
a different assumption, and does much more besides,
dishonouring the body, forbidding marriage and the
use of animal food. And in a sense the erroneous
principle simpler and more easily apprehended
is
and embraced than the truth, which is a nice

balance between the two extremes of an exaggerated
spiritualism on the one hand and of gross sensuality
on the other the latter being the inevitable reaction
and final issue of the former.
For this reason the Church s watchful guidance
is continually needed to keep her children s feet in
the narrow track of truth, deviating neither to right

or left ;
or rather, since the deviations are incessant,
it is her office to recall us now from one excess, now
from another. Hence she is credited by her enemies
with the most opposite vices at one time she is the
;
friend of publicans and sinners, eating and drinking,

a glutton and a wine-bibber; at another, she comes
before the world fasting, and "behold she has a
devil."
Besides this natural misunderstanding of the

relation of body to spirit, a kindred source of the
error we are combating is found in the miscon
ception of the relation of nature to grace. This
error is a perversion, not of a natural truth, but of a
dogma of revelation. No Christian can believe that
the devil created human nature, but many believe

and corrupted the
wrongly that he has so perverted
essence of humanity, that God has practically made
him a present of it that as a cracked reed can only
;
give forth a harsh

and broken note, so every action
and operation, every thought and desire and impulse
nature jars upon God s
proceeding from our fallen
ears, is hateful and discordant to Him, as reminding
Him of the ruin of His fair handiwork. This is
Lutheranism and Jansenism and so far as the ;
or even of St. Paul present

writings of St. Augustine
obscurities "which the unwary and unstable wrest
to their own damnation," it happens that at all
times there have been unauthorized Catholic teachers

who have implicitly, by precept or practice, admitted
a similarly false conception of the nature of original
sin and who have allowed it to tinge their ascetical
;
theories so that natural" and "wicked" have come

to be synonymous in their language. "If we love
from natural motives, such love," they say,

"
must be
wicked. pleasure in the moral perfection
God has no
even of a Socrates, but regards such unbaptized
virtue with disgust."
the truth its

Here, as is subtler, perversion
is the more
easy. Human nature in itsessence
has suffered no deterioration through original sin.
It is still the image and likeness of God, and He,
seeing Himself mirrored therein, pronounces it

"very good ;
and since it is He who works in its
"
to think truth and to

every movement, and causes it
love goodness, and to do righteousness, that which
He works in us and through us as free instruments
is also "very good,"

and "shall in no wise lose its
reward." Yet it does not receive the same reward
as when our soul and its faculties are permeated,
transfigured, and elevated by supernatural light and
grace which, without destroying or removing our
;
natural goodness, shines through it like the sunlight

through stained glass, giving it a glory and radiance
which is in it, but not from it. Grace is not another
soul over and above our natural soul ; but it is a
new radiance given to the soul by a new indwelling
of God. We have not one set of actions which are
natural and another which are supernatural but ;
when the soul is supernaturalized, its faculties and

operations, as it were, its leaves and blossoms, are
characterized like the root from which they spring.
Grace is given us not to destroy but to fulfil, to
perfect nature in its own order and to add to it a
perfection of the Divine order. Supernatural love
presupposes perfect natural love as its subject and
It breathes into it the breath of
divinity and
basis.
makes it instinct with eternal life. It is not too bold
to say that grace is for nature, and not nature for
grace ;
for every subject or substance is the final cause
of its own
properties and endowments clothes for ;
the body, and not the body for clothes. Grace is given
to us for the healing and perfection of our nature,
in order that our natural
intelligence and our natural
affections may be raised to a perceptible preter
natural excellence and infused with an imperceptible
supernatural dignity and merit. Natural love is the
raw material which grace works upon or is wrought
upon. Crush natural love, and grace must remain idle.
u
Here, again, it is evident how fatal a false

dualism must be to ascetical doctrine. And yet the
fallacy as before is an easy one for the natural ;
mind, and and heart are perfected by the

will,
gentle restraint of grace, and reach their culmina

tion through obedience to law and at the cost of
"
many tribulations and from this fact we are

;
"
prone to conclude hastily that what needs to be

conquered, needs to be slain. Some confusion
moreover is due to the double sense attaching to
the word "
natural." Besides the ordinary and

scientific sense there is a specialized use of the
word, in which it signifies, not merely what is not
transfigured by grace, but that which, owing to its
positive deformity and unreasonableness, is incapable

Natural
" "
of being so transfigured. love in this

sense or carnal love," as
"
it is sometimes called
is really "unnatural" if we use "natural" in the
proper sense of reasonable. It is love which is

selfish, disorderly, unrestrained bestowed on some ;
unfitting object, or on some fitting object in some

unfitting way.
that we need not be surprised
It is plain, then,
if many good and holy men have been wanting in

clearness of perception and precision of expression
in regard to this obscure matter, where so much
caution is required to steer straight between the
Scylla and Charybdis. Love me, love my dog," "
sounds a very straightforward and easy principle,

yet it can mean two very different things. It may
mean that, however much I may naturally and

justifiably detest my friend s pet, I cannot con-
sistently with his friendship ill-treat orabuse it, and

may even be bound to bestow upon it the outward
signs of an affection which I do not feel. This is
mere extrinsic love, whose motive is no excellence I
see in the dog but only the excellence I see in my
;
friend. Yet a deeper friendship will make me wish

to go further; to enter into complete sympathy with
my friend s tastes and inclinations ;
so that I shall
try to love what he loves with him, seeing in it what

he sees. Imay not be able to do so altogether,
and so far my friendship is imperfect (supposing his
taste correct) and my soul is out of harmony or not
in the fullest harmony with his. Similarly, when
we speak of loving others for God s sake, we may
mean one of two utterly different things. We may
mean loving them with a merely extrinsic love
whose sole motive is God s own intrinsic goodness ;
or we may mean loving them in sympathy with

God, seeing them as far as we can with His eyes
and loving them for what we see in them. There
can be no doubt whatever as to which is the true
conception, that, namely, which means the most
perfect, and intelligent, and sympathetic love of
God. We can never hope to see in others all that
lovableness which He sees or that our heart shall
;
be drawn towards the little we do see with a force

not infinitely less than that of the Divine Heart ;
but the measure of our approach is the exact

measure of our growth in the love of God.
The more we understand and love God, the
more shall we enter into sympathy with His love of
men and the more we get to understand and love
;
3 o8 THE DIVINE PRECEPT.
men, the sooner shall we be able to enter into the

mind of God. For all true and spiritual friendship
is founded on and requires community of tastes, the
appreciation and love of the same things. God,

hungering and thirsting for our affection, knows
well how slowly that affection must be won how ;
our taste must be gradually formed and raised until

it can find delight in the Divine beauty, which is
the common object of knowledge and ecstatic love

whereby God and His saints are bound together in
a single life of joy and praise even as two friends
may, in some common object of loving adoration,
be tied together heart to heart. Were there one
whose capacity we doubted not, and for whose fuller
love we craved, with what care should we not
lead him into completer sympathy with ourselves,
bridging over the distance between us. So it is
that God leads us to Himself through creatures;
step by step purifying and raising our love giving ;
it an ever-increasing breadth, and depth, and height,
till at last we love nothing in creatures but what is
truly lovable and Divine ;

and are, therefore, in
proximate readiness to love Divinity itself, not to
the exclusion of others, but indefinitely above them
all.
Then, indeed, what we love in them is Him ;
not His substance, but His image. Nor is our love

of the image a merely relative love whose sole
motive is the excellence of the thing imaged as ;
though the image were but an arbitrary sign but it ;
is an intrinsic love founded on the real and inherent
beauty of the image; it is a love distinct from,

though subordinate to, the love of the archetype to

which it leads us.
And what we love in Him is them ;
for we
have no proper concept of God, but only a con
cept built up from creatures, amongst which
man is principal, as the microcosm, the epitome
of creation. All the Divine perfections that
draw our love to God are those that we have
gradually learnt to love first in our fellow-men
justice, truth, purity, gentleness, mercy, and the
rest. As far as we are blind to these excellences
in our neighbour, as far as we steel our hearts
against their attraction, so far is the Divine beauty
hidden from our eyes and impotent over our
affections ;
we may hear and we may assent to the
truth that God is good, and gracious, and holy, and
just, but these words kindle no fire of enthusiasm or
devotion within us ; for our affections are dwarfed

and stunted for want of food and exercise we have ;
no heart to give we have crushed our love of man,

;
and have not found the love of God we are unloved ;
and unlovable unloving and unable to love. Nor

;
can we ever know, or at least realize, God s
passionate love for us if we ourselves have never

felt the hungering affection of the mother for the
child, of friend for friend, orsome one of the nobler

forms of suppliant, self-denying love and devotion.
Else what does it avail to tell me that God s love for
me is that of father, mother, friend, and spouse, all
in one and carried to infinity ? Or to tell me that I
should aspire to love Him back as father, mother,
friend, and spouse, if I have never given any one of
these affections play ; never developed and purified

my power of loving? In brief, it is through man
alone that we can know or love God as long as we
see Him only through a glass darkly, and before we
are face to face with Him.
To love our neighbour as Christ loves us, means,
therefore, to love him as far as possible in sympathy
with God ; loving him what is really best and
for
divinest in him ; seeking to bring out more fully the
hidden image of God in his soul. It means the
perfecting of our instinctive affections ; recognizing

in them the impulse of the Divine will drawing men
first to one another, and through one another to
Itself, as the Supreme Lover and centre of all

attraction. It means restraint and sacrifice and the
sword of separation, for Sine dolor e non vivitur in
amove "the life of love is a life of sorrow." It is
the love of Abraham for Isaac ; the love of Christ

for His Mother; the love which is ready to stab and
thrust and slay; which shrinks from no present
pain for the sake of after bliss. It is the love of
St. Paul for his children, heedless of present ingra
titude and misunderstanding; spending itself gladly,
though the more I love you the less I be loved."
"
And it will show itself in ceaseless toil and labour

for the beloved in endless endeavour to communi
;
cate with him our choicest treasure to get him to ;
see what we see and to love what we love to break ;
down every wall of separation or unsympathy that

stands between soul and soul to find ever richer ;
treasures ourselves that we may have more to share,

more costly and precious fuel to feed love s flame;
to learn new arts and sciences that we may impart

them to the beloved to wean our hearts from all
;
that spurious, untrue, lest we hurt so much as a

is
hair of his head, every one of which is numbered

and dear to us ;
God alone that pearl of
to find in
great price, that common Friend who is the bond

of all friendship, in whom all other pure and noble
sympathies are united.
This is how Christ has loved us ; and His
precept is thatwe should so love one another, or
rather labour so to love one another ;
for it is the
work of our life to educate ourselves out of our
selfishness and sensuality and to learn the lovable-
ness of God s children. we can study God only
If
inHis works, man is the epitome and summary of
His works and it ;
is there we must seek Him and
love Him. O nines in eo, ei eum in omnibus
"
All
in Him and Him in all." The second great precept
is not different from the first, but only another
expression of it.
Whether we consider our Saviour s human love

of His Blessed
Mother, Baptist, of His
of the
Apostles, of His own people, of His betrayer, of His
murderers and enemies, we see everywhere the
characteristics we have described above. It was
no mere extrinsic love indifferent to the inherent
lovableness of its immediate object, and therefore
equal towards He loved all equally in the sense
all.
that He
loved each, so far as each was beloved by
His Father and made lovable. But God s gifts are
manifold, in no two cases the same. He has no
unjust preferences; but He loved His Mother
immeasurably beyond all and His Apostles who ;
were "with Him in His temptations" beyond His

other disciples; and Peter, and James, and John
more than the other Apostles and John of these, ;
with the peculiar love of special friendship. And

He loved Lazarus and his sisters, but especially
Mary. Plainly His love was not merely extrinsic,
but was motived by what He saw in each and ;
since His estimate was perfectly true and just, and

His and noble, His human love was
affections pure
in themost perfect sympathy and accord with His
Divine love. And how very naturally His love
manifested itself is also clear. He wept over the
grave of Lazarus He wept over His beloved city
;
of Jerusalem He sought at times to be apart with

;
His friends He revealed to them His special

;
secrets ;
He sought their sympathy and their
prayers ;
He was grieved by their coldness and
slowness to believe in His love by their cowardice
;
and treachery. Altogether, if His love for them was

Divine and supernatural, it was at the same time
thoroughly natural and human, and therefore Quod
Detis conjunxit, homo non separet What God hath "
united let no man put asunder."

Yet if it was deep and tender beyond the love "
of women," it was not soft or selfish, but austere and

restrained a love that could rebuke, and chasten,
;
and hold aloof with a severity proportioned to its

tenderness. How abrupt with His Blessed Mother
at times how seemingly cold and indifferent; how
;
ruthless with Peter ;

how cruel in the very tender
ness of His reproaches ! None could sit at His
right hand or lean upon His bosom, who had not

drunk deep of His chalice and been baptized with
His baptism and pierced through and through with
the dividing sword of sorrow.
And if it is the part of love to give itself, to
empty itself out to the last drop of blood ; to
humble itself to the dust, who ever loved as He ?
"
Greater love hath no man than this that a man

lay down his life for his friends ;
"
only a God-Man
can go beyond this and say, Take and eat this is
"
My Body. Drink ye all of this, for this is My

Blood." Yet it is only the same natural longing
carried to a greater extreme, usque in finem ; it is
the passionate craving of all true love, divinized and
lifted above the clouds. Nay, it is rather God s
Love made and dwelling among us Divine,
flesh ;
yet altogether human. And this is His precept,

that as He has loved us so we also should love
one another; for if a man love not his brother
whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he
hath not seen ?
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
"
O sacrum convivium in quo Christus sumitur ;
Recolitur memoria passionis ejus ;
Mens impletur gratia ;
Et futurse gloriae nobis pignus datur."

St. Thomas Aquinas.
IN these words the Blessed Eucharist is offered to

our consideration, first, as a sacrificial banquet ;
that is, as being at once a sacrifice and a banquet ;
then, as a memorial or commemorative feast ;
finally, in its effects as a means of grace in the
present, and a pledge of glory in the future.

Let us then first dwell upon it under its sacrificial
aspect.
God is and they that adore Him must
a spirit,
adore Him and in truth.
in spirit Man, on the
other hand, is not spirit alone, but spirit and body,
and therefore his adoration, internal and external,
private and public, is an embodied adoration. He
is bound by the necessity of his double nature to
picture God to himself, and to speak of Him after

a human fashion ; to conceive Him in his own
image and likeness. And God who has made man,
and knows whereof he is made and remembers
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 315
that he is but dust, not only permits it and

tolerates it, but wills it to be so. Had He wanted
us different, He would have made us different.
And so He wills that we should utter our prayers
and praises with voice and tongue, as though He
heard with mortal ears and could not read the
secrets of the heart that we should lift up our eyes
;
to Him,as though He were seated in the clouds

far above us that ;
we should kneel and prostrate
ourselves as at the feet of a mortal monarch that ;
we should hold up our joined hands, as it were

begging release from our fetters in a word, that we
should embody our inward worship in outward
signs and
symbols, and speak of spirit in the
terms of sense, of the infinite in the language
of the finite. Nor is there in these practices,
as some foolishly think, any real ignorance or
superstition, so long as the inadequate and
merely symbolic character of such utterances is
adverted to.
more needful are such symbolic manifesta
Still
tions where men meet together for the public

worship of God, and where their internal concord
in thought and desire can be expressed and secured
only by means of outward expression.

Chief among those rites whereby in all times
and places men have embodied their worship, is
the offering of sacrifice, in which food is brought
and laid as a gift on God s table, as a sign of
praise and adoration, of gratitude for favours
received, of sorrow for sins committed, as the price
of protection and assistance and grace. As the
3i6 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
word is now understood, sacrifice is said

exclusively
of an offering made to the one supreme God in
attestation of His supremacy and oneness so that
;
it can be offered to no other being, however great,

without the guilt of idolatry and blasphemy. But
if we look back to early times for the derivation of
the rite, we find apparently that food-offerings

were made by way of tribute and homage to the
father or patriarch or monarch, to symbolize
such a relation between the offerer and receiver
as exists between children and their father, from
whom they derive their life and support and food ;
who spring from one body, eat of one bread,

drink of one cup, dwell in one house, look to one
heritage. We
see that it was directed to the
confirmation of the rights of sonship where they
already existed or to their renewal, when broken
;
off by trespass or to the creation of an adoptive

;
sonship, where no such tie had existed before. It
was, therefore, the sign or seal or outward formality

of a solemn contract, or covenant, whereby the
rights and duties of fatherhood on one side, and of
sonship on the other, were created, renewed, or
ratified. And accordingly, when men needed to
enter into relation with God, the universal Father,
to be received as His adopted sons, to be allowed
to sit at His household table and eat of His meat,
itwas in keeping with our necessity of conceiving
Divine things humanwise, that we should bring
food -offerings to Him, and solemnize our covenant
with Him, according to the rites and conventions of
similar human contracts.
That the offerer should partake of the victim

after it has been accepted is the natural, though
not necessary sequel of sacrifice. It is a com
plementary act to which the act of sacrifice is
in some sort directed. To
accept the offering,
is to admit the offerer to the
rights of sonship,
whereof the sign and evidence is a seat at the
household table, a share in the household meal.
Thus, when the prodigal is restored to the forfeited
rights of sonship, a banquet is prepared for him by
his father, as we read
in the parable. The food
which one as a supplicant and servant or
offers
slave, he receives back as a child from the hand

of his father.
That this is the earliest notion of sacrifice and
communion, seems fairly evident from a careful
study of the sacrifices of the Gentiles and of the
pre-Levitical sacrifices, recorded in Holy Scripture.
Those of the Mosaic law are too complicated with
prophetic symbolism to permit the root-idea to
stand out in all its clearness and definition. find We
God rebuking the Israelites for offering food liba
tions to false gods instead of to Him and St. Paul;
sums up the whole matter where he says

briefly, :
I speak as to the initiated;

"
judge ye what I say:

The Cup of Blessing which we bless, is it not the
communion of the Blood of Christ ? the Bread
which we break, is it not the communion of the Body
of Christ ? Look at Israel after the flesh. Are not
they that eat of the sacrifice partakers of the altar ?
I would not have you to be
partakers with devils.
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup
3 i8 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
of devils you cannot share the table of the Lord

;
and the table of devils." 1

Whether, then, we speak of Gentile sacrifice, or
Jewish sacrifice, or Christian sacrifice ; of the altar
of devils, or of Jehovah the notion of sacrifice, of ;
food-offering and libation, is one and the same
it is a solemn covenant-feast, an expression of

absolute subjection and submission on the one side,
and a pledge of protection and fatherhood on the
other. The former is symbolized by the offering,
the latter by the communion which follows accept
They shall be My people and I will be
"
ance,
their Thus our Saviour says, expressing the
God."
fruit of His own sacrifice I ascend to My Father :

"
and to your Father; to My God and to your God."

But like every outward expression or symbol, a
sacrifice may be true or false according as the
inward homage it signifies is present or absent.
Self-oblation and subjection is the soul and quick
ening principle, without which the sacrifice which
symbolizes and embodies it, is worthless or worse
than worthless before God for we insult Him with
a spotted and blemished victim instead of honouring
Him with an odour of sweetness. Of such lying
sacrifices God says :
"
Shall I eat the flesh of bulls

and Obedience
"
or drink the blood of goats

"
? : is
1
Ut prudentibus quod dico. Calix
loquor. vos ipsi judicate
"
benedictionis communicatio sanguinis

cui benedicimus nonne
Christ! est ? et panem quern frangiraus nonne participatio corporis
Domini est ? ... Videte Israel secundum carnem nonne qui edunt !
hostias participes sunt altaris ? Nolo autem vos socios fieri . . .
daemoniorum non potestis mensse Domini participes esse et mensae

;
daemoniorum." (i Cor. xi. 15, seq.)

better than sacrifice,and to hearken than the fat

of and David:
rams;" Thou hadst desired
"If
sacrifice I would have given it Thee, but Thou
delightest not in burnt offerings." Not that God

here rejects the form of worship which He Himself
had approved and enjoined but He reminds us
;
that the form is not the reality, the sign is not the
thing signified, the body of sacrifice is not the spirit
of sacrifice.
Thus, gathering up our results so far, we see
that sacrifice is an offering of food made to Almighty
God to testify our submission and subjection to
Him as to the Author and Giver of all to express
;
our desire to be received or retained among the

number of His children, to sit at His table, and to
share His meat. It expresses our love and reverence
for His glory and majesty, our thankfulness for all
His goodness towards us, our consequent sorrow if
we have offended one so good in Himself and
praiseworthy, one so good to us and thankworthy.
It is an earnest of our desire to repair the wrong
we have done singly and collectively for as an act
of public and social worship, it is an offering for the
sins of the people, for the sins of the world. We
implore by those helps and graces needful for
it all
ourselves singly and collectively, for the spread of

His Kingdom, for the extension of His glory. And
God in accepting it, and in inviting us to partake if
we will, thereby and
ratifies the covenant
signs
between us, and engages to be to us a Father, if we
will be to Him true children.
And all that is contained in this notion of
3 2o THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
sacrifice we find verified in a higher, more excellent,

and truer way, in the great sacrifice of the Christian
Church, which is the full and adequate expression

of that worship which the sacrifices of Jew and
pagan strove vainly to utter in lisping, stammering
accents, Lex habens iimbram futurorum bonorum
"the law being but the shadow of good things to
come :
"
the substance being Christ. For the

praise and gratitude and contrition of every soul
that ever lived, the perfect self-oblation of the whole
race, could never satisfy what is due to God in the
way of love and worship much less could such
;
internal dispositions embody themselves in an

offering adequate to their expression. Therefore,
that the human race might be able to offer Him an
acceptable and adequate sacrifice, God gave His
only Son to be the second Adam, that all who
received Him and were incorporated with Him,
might through and with Him offer a supreme and
sufficient worship in spirit and in truth. He alone,
who in virtue of His Divinity was eternally in the
bosom of the Father, could comprehend the infinite
lovableness of God could measure the depth and
;
height and length and breadth of His mercies

towards the children of men could fathom the ;
abyss of the malice of sin, knowing each several sin

of every son of Adam could sorrow for it, as if
;
itwere His own by imputation and could make ;
amends for it so ample as to blot it out of the

Divine memory, as some faint discord is drowned
in a great burst of harmony He alone could ;
intercede with infallible wisdom and efficacy for the

glory of God, for His Kingdom and His will

upon earth for the needs of mankind
;
spiritual
and temporal for the
averting of Divine anger ;
;
for help in temptation and deliverance from evil.

And being the Son of God by nature, and also the
Son man, He alone was the fitting Mediator of
of
thatNew and Eternal Covenant between God and
man, whereby the human race under Him as their
Head was adopted as the son of God and entitled
to a
place at the banquet of Eternal Life a
Covenant sealed with the sacrifice of His Body and
the libation of His Blood His Blood of the New
and Eternal Testament. Moreover, if the inner
submission and self-oblation of all men and
angels
together could never equal the infinite adoration
due to God, or atone for the indignity offered to
Him by a single wilful insult or rebellion not so ;
the self-submission of one who in point of

personal
dignity was equal to the Father and of the same
nature His beloved Son in whom He was well
pleased. Nor was the sacrificial offering, wherein
that worship was embodied, something of mere
conventional worth, an inadequate symbol of
the supersensible reality, but, Priest and Victim
in one, He offered that same
priceless self, the Body
and the Blood of the Incarnate Son of God as a
true food-offering, on Calvary and on the altar.
As a true food-offering, for He is the very Bread
of Life, not such manna as Israel ate in the
desert, but the true Bread
from Heaven; the
bread of grace, of the spiritual life,
nay, of the
Divine life.
322 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
Now, plainly, God, who is the Giver and Pre

server of that Divine vitality, stands as little in
need of this spiritual and heavenly food as He does

If I were hungry," He seems to
"
of bodily food.
say, I would not tell thee
"
for mine are the cattle ;
the earth is the Lord s

"
on a thousand hills;
"
for
and the fulness thereof." Yet though He was rich,
for our sakes God has become poor and needy and
dependent. He knows well that love is starved

where it finds no indigence, nothing to bear, or to
give, or to suffer ; that it seeks rather to minister
than to be ministered to to give than to receive. ;
And so He has framed Himself round, as it were,

with a halo of created glory in the creatures which
He has made and loved and His love makes their ;
interests and needs His own, so that in the order

of nature no less than in that of grace He seems to
say :Inasmuch as ye did it to the least of these
"
My it unto Me."
brethren ye did And therefore
He who needed nothing in Himself, in the person of
poor fallen humanity hungered and fainted for the
God so loved the world that its
"
Bread of Life. "
miseries were His own so loved the world that

"
He gave His only-begotten Son for it. Far be it "
from us to picture an angry God reluctantly dis

suaded from vengeance through the intervention of
a more placable Son. There is but one nature and
and I and My Father are
"
love will in the two.

one He hath seen Me hath seen the
" "
;
that
Father;" "The Father Himself loveth you." Let
us rather enter into the eternal council of mercy
and hear the Father s compassionate demand,
"
Whence shall we buy bread in the desert that

these and the answer of the Son of His
"
may eat ?
Ecce me Lo, here am I send

"
Love, ego, mitte ;
Me," the true Manna, the Bread that giveth life to

the world. Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not,
then said I Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God to
:
;
be obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.

And now what was this
"
will
"
that He came to
do ; of which says He
My
"
do the will
: meat is to
ofHim that sent Me, and to perfect His work ? "
What was this work that was perfected when He

bowed His head and said Comummatum est It is :
"
perfected ? What was the commandment of the

"
Father which He came to obey and fulfil ? Even

that commandment whereof He was the
great
teacher and example of which He A new "
says, ;
commandment give I unto you; even that which

you had from the beginning." This is My precept "
that you love one another in the same manner as I

have loved you." And in what manner? Even
unto death. Christ was made for us obedient to
the new and
eternal precept of fraternal love, "
unto
death, even to the death of the Cross." The Good
Shepherd layeth down His life for His
sheep. It
was, then, in obedience to that precept that
having
loved His own who were in the world He loved
them to the uttermost, and took bread and brake
and blessed and gave to them,
saying Take ye and :
eat, this is My Body which is given for

you and ;
the cup, saying: Drink, this is Blood

My of the
New and Eternal Covenant of Love love between ;
man and God, love between man and man. And

just as when for God s sake one gives alms to the

poor one gives it to God so in the same act
;
whereby Christ Himself to us for food in

offers
obedience to the Father s precept of love, He first
offers Himself to the Father, and in so doing offers

an infinite sacrifice of praise, thanks, expiation, and
prayer.
And of this act of sovereign worship we are
made sharers and fellow-offerers as often as we
gather round the altar to hear Mass and, as it were,
to lay our hands upon the head of the victim and to
make His offering our own. For as the act of the
lips or the heart is not the act of those organs alone,
but of the whole body to which they belong so the ;
praise and worship of Christ our Head the words ;
of His lips, the love of His Heart are not His alone,
but ours also, as often as by hearing Mass we make
ourselves one body with the priest, His vicar and
representative. Little as our self-oblation is worth
apart from His, yet if in union with it we offer
ourselves up at Mass a living sacrifice to obey, if
need be, the precept of love even to death, our offer
ing is merged into one with His, and His with ours.
And though our knowledge of sin be childish and
our grief for God s dishonour feeble, and our efforts
at reparation ineffectual, yet if we heap them
together with this infinite sacrifice of expiation and
satisfaction, they will not be rejected or despised.
For it is only in harmony with His praise and
thanksgiving that ours have any meaning or value
in the ears of God. In His Heart is gathered up
all the love and joy of creation, of angels and of
men, and thence welling upwards to His lips, finds

utterance in one burst of Eucharistic praise, of
which the Church sings: "It is truly meet and
right, that we should always and everywhere render
thanks to Thee, Holy Lord, Almighty Father,
Everlasting God." And how ? Through Christ
"
our Lord," "through whom the

angels praise Thy
majesty, Dominations adore, and Powers tremble ;
. . with whose voices we supplicate that ours may
.
be mingled in one song Holy Holy, Holy," and :
again Through
: Him and
"
with Him and in Him

is to Thee, O God the Father, in union with the
Holy Ghost, all honour and glory for ever and for
ever. Amen."
n.
"
O sacrum convivium in quo Christus sumitur."
Wehave already dwelt on the Blessed Eucharist

regarded as a sacrifice. We have roughly traced
the notion of sacrifice from its first beginnings to
its fulldevelopment and realization in the perfect
Church. We have seen that
sacrifice of the Christian
a food-offering made by way of homage and tribute
was a symbol and expression of dependence and
subjection such as exists between the children and
the father of the household to whom they owe their
existence and preservation, to whom they look for
their heritage and that this offering was directed
;
to the strengthening of the family tie where it
already existed to the renewal of it where it had

;
been sundered by sin to the creation of it where it

;
had not existed before. We have seen that when

offered to God, the Father and Creator of all, it was
a confession of our absolute dependence on Him as
the Author and Preserver, not only of our natural,
but of our supernatural life, the life of grace,
"
eternal life
"
as the Scriptures call it ; that it was

a creation, or else a renewal, or else a confirmation
of our claim to be called the sons of God by
adoption, and to take our seat at His table with His

sons and with the Eternal Son of His love to eat ;
the bread of angels. Finally, we have seen that as

no man could offer any sacrifice adequate to the
majesty of God, the Eternal Son, first-born of every
creature, came down as Manna from Heaven, the
living Bread of the soul, the Food of Immortality
and in obedience to the Father s eternal precept of
love, loved us even unto death, and gave Himself to
be our food, saying Take and eat, This is My Body,"
:
"
and that in that same act whereby in obedience to

the Father He offers Himself to us
day by for food
day on a thousand altars, Himself a He first offers

true food-offering and sacrifice to the Father. And
of this great sacrifice of praise and thanks and
prayer and expiation, we are fellow-offerers and
sharers as often as, by assisting at Mass, we make
one body under Christ our head. For the action of
the head is not of the head alone, but of the whole
body in subjection to it.
Let us now dwell on the Holy Eucharist viewed

more strictly as a sacramental communion, as a
convivium in quo Christus sumitur. For though sacri
fice and communion are closely connected the latter
being the complement and, in some sense, the end

of the former yet they are separable and often
separated as we see, for example, in many of the
;
Levitical sacrifices, which were not partaken of by

the offerers, for symbolic and prophetic reasons.
It is only so far as the sacrifice is accepted, that the
offerer has a claim to partake of it and the right
;
thus purchased need not be exercised here and now.

Those who sit down as convivcz, or guests, at] the
sacrificial banquet are fed as children at the hands
of the same father, who, as he has given them their
life, and increases it. They derive
so also fosters
their life and nourishment from a common source ;
they spring from one body, they eat of one bread,

they drink of one cup, they dwell in one house, they
look forward to share one inheritance. And so of
the Eucharistic feast. The chalice which we bless
is it not the communion or sharing of the Blood of
Christ ? the Bread which we break is it not the

sharing of the Body of Christ ? For we, being
many, are one bread and one body, as many as are
partakers of that Bread. We
being many, distinct
and separate units, are one bread, for even as the
grains of corn are ground up into flour and welded
together in the dough and hardened together in the
oven so in this mystery of love and charity all that
;
separates man from man, tends to be obliterated,

all the dividing lines are erased under the amal
gamating force of love, which seeks to give all and to
receive all; to absorb and to be absorbed, staying
only at the limit of personal distinctness.
We
being many in one bread, as many as are
"
partakers of that bread." We are one bread,

because we live by one bread, deriving our life from
the same principle. What bread is this ? am "I
the Bread of Life." It is not because He gives

Himself under the semblance of bread that He calls
Himself the Bread of Life but conversely, because;
He the True, the Spiritual, the Heavenly Bread,

is
the stay of eternal life, therefore He gives Himself

under that defective semblance to signify that truth.
Yet how imperfect is the symbolism Of those !
who live from one loaf or who drink from one cup,
no two receive the same identical part, but similar
parts, once united, now divided. Nor are they
transformed into the nature of the bread they
receive, but rather it is transformed into their
nature. And so of the sacramental
symbols or
outward appearances, no two receive the same part
from the hand of Christ and it is one bread
;
" "
only so far as it is one in kind and received from

the same hand. But the underlying reality, the
True Bread of Eternal Life, Christ who is received,
is not multiplied or divided, but remaining in
Himself one and the same, yesterday, to-day, and
for ever removed from all limiting conditions
;
of time and place, is communicated to all

nay, ;
rather, draws all to Himself, as to a common centre;

changes all into Himself all, that is, all who receive
Him worthily at any place or in any time. For our
convivce, or fellow-guests, are not only those who
kneel beside us to receive Him here and now but ;
all those who

any difference of place or time
in
have received Him or shall receive Him. This
Sacred Banquet, though set forth on innumerable

altarsand prolonged age after age to the end of the
world, is morally one single feast in which we
communicate with, as well as commemorate the
"
"
Glorious and Ever Blessed Virgin Mary, the Blessed

Apostles and Martyrs, and all the Saints. In Christ
time and place are gathered up as into their cause
the centre from which they radiate at the creative ;
words of blessing,
Earth breaks up Time drops away

;
In flows Heaven with its new day

Of endless life.
The substance of His Sacred Body being present

after the manner of a spirit, is
present to each
receiver, as our soul is present to each part of our
body; not part to part, but wholly to each part;
not multiplied with the parts, but one and the same
in all. For the substance of the bread in each host
is not transformed into a different
Christ, as though
His Sacred Body were multiplied in place and time.
He is not changed into it ; but it is changed into
Him. The appearance ismultiplied and divided ;
but the reality is one and the self-same. Nor is
that Eternal Bread changed into us, but we are
changed into Him united with Him and thereby
; ;
changed into and united to one another being all ;
merged into the same reality. We are all "one
bread and one body."

Of this mysterious union we can speak only in
the figures and images of revelation itself. As the "
living Father hath sent Me and as I live by the

Father, so he that eateth Me the same also shall live

by Me." It is from the Father that the Eternal Son
originates and, in some sense, derives His Divine
being, and nature, and life. One and the same
identical possessed by both, but with an order
life is
of dependence such that one is called Father and

Begetter, the other Son and Begotten, and while
we may say that the Son lives by the Father, we
may not say that the Father lives by the Son. The
Son is the Image and Likeness of the Father,
but the Father is not the Image and Likeness of
the Son. The creatures which proceed from God,
need to be preserved and watched over by His
providence, to be fed by His fatherly bounty and
care but that Eternal Life, communicated to the
;
Son is unfailing, unchanging, needing no conserva

tion or feeding. So that one and the same eternal
act is both generation, and conservation, and
sustenance in a simple and ineffable sense. The
Father is at once the Giver and the Bread of that
life which is communicated to the Son. "
As the
Living Father," the Father who is Eternal,
"
hath
sent Me," hath uttered Me
His Eternal Word, hath
sent Me forth proceeding from Him and as I live ;
"
by the Father," who is the Giver and Sustainer and

Bread of My uncreated life so he that eateth Me
"
the same shall live by Me." So," i.e., plainly, not

"
in the same way, but in some analogous way of

which the mystery of the Trinity is the archetype.
Christ lives in us and we live by Him so far as He
communicates His nature to us, and assimilates us
to Himself, conforming our mind more and more to
the pattern of His bringing all our sympathies and

;
affections into accordance with those of His own

Divine Heart. For this is the way in which spiritual
union manifests itself; eliminating all distance and
diversity and opposition of thought and sentiment.
As the Eternal Father and Son have but one
identical nature, operation, thought, and love ; so
Christ and the sanctified soul have, not indeed
identical, but altogether similar thoughts and
affections.
This is the manner in which our sacramental
union with Christ manifests itself; though what it is
in itself is veiled in
mystery. can only say that We
a new life-principle is infused into us and that as ;
the life of sense differs from that of mere growth,

and the life of reason from that of sense, so
Eternal Life which is a participation of Divine
Life, differs from that of reason. We can also
assert that, unlike the life of reason, though it is in
us it is not of us even as the warmth we receive
;
from the fire differs from that which is generated

within us and by us. Hence it is ascribed to a
principle which is in us yet distinct from us which ;
is said to dwell in us
which, like a guest, can come
;
and go without prejudice to our natural faculties

and attributes. Christ, the Bread of Life, is the
Fire which warms us and illuminates us with the
life of grace and is so far said to dwell in us, and
;
to make His abode with us. He that eateth My

Flesh dwelleth in Me and I in him." I in them
"
[Father] and Thou in Me, that they may be made

perfect in one."
"
Perfect in one," for in proportion as we are all
drawn into union with the same Divine substance,

we are united one to another and as the minds of
;
men becoms more conformed to the pattern of

Christ mind, and their affections and sentiments
s
are corrected by the same standard, the barriers to

are broken down,
perfect sympathy and fraternity
and "we being many are one bread and one body,
as many as are partakers of that bread and the ;
"
four quarters of the earth are knit together as

Peter saw them in his vision of the Catholicity of
his Church into one brotherhood in Christ under
our Father in Heaven. Many shall come from the
East and from the West and shall sit down to eat
bread in the Kingdom of God with Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob.
H<zc est ! This is, indeed, the true
vera fraternitus
brotherhood, whereof the brotherhood of nature, of
our common descent from Adam, is but the dim
figure and suggestion. What tie of affection is it

between men to descend from a common ancestor,
five or six generations back what, from one ;
distant from us by thousands of years ? But at the

altar of the Catholic Church, all nations meet
together at the table of the Father of their Eternal

and Divine Life, and eat of the same spiritual meat
and drink of the same spiritual drink. At that table
there is no distinction between Jew or Greek,
Barbarian or Scythian, bond or free, male or female ;
there is no respect to riches, or talents, or birth, or

colour; there is no distinction of classes and masses;
but Christ is all and in all. There they alone are
great who are great in His eyes and receive most

abundantly of His fulness. He fills the hungry
with good things and sends the rich empty away.
A man may be great in talent yet poor in posses
sions great in learning but little in birth great in
; ;
influence, little in virtue. But he who is great in

the court of God is alone absolutely and truly great.
At that table men are ranked as they are in the
eyes of God, the mighty are put down from their
seat and the lowly are exalted to the ; former He
says: "Give this man room," to the latter, "Friend,
come up higher."
It is Catholic Church to
the mission of the
direct, and and supernaturalize that pro
foster,
gressive evolution, whereby the whole human family

tends to knit itself into one brotherhood and society.
False philosophies have fought skilfully and per
sistently against her, backed up by the Gates of
Hell. They have taken the most sacred ideas of
the Gospel, and under specious perversions, have
used them in the interests of servitude, tyranny, and
oppression. They have associated so much that is
odious with their canting use of these sacred words,
they have put forward such crafty counterfeits, that
there is danger lest the wheat be rooted up with
tares, and that in rejecting the perversion and dis
tortion of the truth we
reject the truth itself.
The history of the Christian era has been the
history of the development of the dogma of the
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men
in Christ ; of the liberty of the sons of God, of their
equality, not merely as men, but as the sons of God
in destiny or in fact, of the slow vindication of

inalienable rights founded on this equality. So far as
the movement has been directed by Catholic dogma
it has prospered and counter
; so far as sophistical
feit notions of liberty and fraternity have intruded
themselves, it has been impeded. But the chief
factor in its progress has been this Sacred Banquet "
wherein Christ is received sacrum convivium in

"
quo Christus smnitur, where high and low, rich and

poor, master and servant, emperor and beggar, have
knelt, side century after century, in their
by side,
common nothingness before Him who in obedience
to the Father s precept of Fraternal Love gives
Himself for all and to all indiscriminately ; and who
have given you an example," that, as I
" "
says : I
have loved you, so ye also should love one another;

"
where, we being many are one bread and one

body, as many as partake of that Bread of the :
Bread of Life.
in.
"
Recolitur memoria passionis ejus."
Having previously dealt with the Blessed

Eucharist as a sacrifice, we considered it in the
light of communion, whereby we

a sacramental
being many were made one bread and one body in
virtue of a mystic transformation into one and the
same Bread of Life. We saw that this incom
prehensible union this infusion of Eternal Life
tended to bear fruit outwardly and manifest itself in
a continual conforming of our hearts and intelli-
gences to the human heart and mind of the

Incarnate God Himself; that hereby our nature
and life became so saturated with His, that we
could truly say, "
Now I live, yet not I, but Christ

liveth in me ;
"
He
Himself has taught us when
as
He tells us, "As I live by the Father, so he that
eateth Me shall live by Me." We saw that the
great end of this convivium or banquet was to draw
the four quarters of the earth into one, to knit them
together into one great brotherhood in Christ under
God, the universal Father and Food-giver in the
order of nature and of grace.
We must now revert to the sacrificial aspect of
the mystery, and consider it, not
merely as a true
sacrifice, but more particularly as a memorial
sacrifice or feast of commemoration. We know
that, year by year, the Israelites offered the paschal
lamb in thankful remembrance of their deliverance
from the destroyer, through the blood of the first
paschal lamb. Each annual offering was in itself
as truly a sacrifice as the first;
yet it was also a
commemoration, which the first was not. It was a
relative as well as an absolute sacrifice. It was not,
however, merely the commemoration of a sacrifice,
as it were a dramatic and fictitious
reproduction of
it, but a sacrifice of commemoration. So the Holy
Eucharist is not merely a symbol or fictitious
representation of Christ s sacrifice on Calvary, but
is itself at once a sacrifice and a
commemoration of
a sacrifice. We commemorate the event by repeating
it, renewing it
just as we sometimes commemorate
a first
meeting with a friend by meeting again on
the anniversary or as we like to retrace the walks

;
of some happier days, not in memory alone, but in

fact. So our Saviour loves to renew Calvary as far
as possible ; to give Himself again and again ; to
enjoy as nearly as possible that ecstasy of love and
pain once more.
Were it merely a calling to mind of a past event,
and not a real renewing of it, then indeed a
Passion play, or a crucifix, or the reading of the
Gospel would be a far more effectual provision than
the breaking of bread and the pouring out of wine.
But, as we have seen, Christ truly and indeed gives
Himself to us in every Eucharist to be our food ;
and in offering Himself to us, first offers Himself as

a food-offering or sacrifice to the Eternal Father.
It is a commemoration of Calvary because He does
here really, though sacramentally, what He did

there visibly and sensibly He gives Himself to be
the Bread of Life. In both He gives Himself; and
gives Himself as food as the Bread of God.
: For
there are two means whereby grace or Eternal Life
is conveyed to the soul prayer and the sacraments ;
two ways in which we apprehend Christ, the Bread
of Life. Of this non-sacramental feeding He says,
He that cometh to Me shall never hunger
"
;
he that
believeth in Me shall never thirst." To come to
Christ, to believe in Him, to submit to Him, to
receive Him, is the condition whereby we feed upon
Him As many as received
outside the sacraments.
"
Him them gave He power to become the sons of

to
God; to them that believe in His name." It is
not in asserting this, but in denying the sacramental
reception of Christ, that heretics have gone astray.

God has not tied His grace to the sacraments, and
as there is a baptism of desire, so there is a spiritual
communion. Yet where access to the sacraments is
possible, none may with impunity despise such easy
and abundant sources of grace, or vaunt a more
spiritual religion than that instituted by Christ.
Christ crucified is indeed the food of the soul,
the cause of its growth and of its development in
intelligence and in love. As God, He is the life of

the soul, Ego sum Veritas et Vita; as God-Man, He is
the Bread of Life, the means of life. For the mind
and heart need gradual preparation for the full
face-to-face revelation of God. It is the function
of the Word made Flesh to show us the Father,,
step by step, leading us from light to light, and love
to love, till we are prepared to attain our spiritual
maturity in the possession of the Source of all light

and love. Thus the soul is fed and fashioned in the
dark womb of time, ere it is born into the day of
eternity. As a book feeds the mind and forms it,
so the fact of the Incarnation and Death of Christ
isan inexhaustible store of spiritual food, whereby
we go on from strength to strength, till we appear
before God s face in Sion.
What Christ does in the sacramental sacrifice of
the altar, that He did in the visible sacrifice, which
began with His Incarnation and ended with the
shedding of His Blood on Calvary; and that He
will continue to do for all eternity :
Se nascens dedit socium

Convescens in edulium
W
Se moriens in pretium
Se regnans dat in prasmium.
Dedit se : He gave Himself for us usque ad mortem

even unto death. In the same sense, every new
gift of Himself in the sacrament is a reminder of
that past self-giving, of the life-sacrifice ending on
Calvary; it is a pledge of that future self-giving
referred to in the words, Se regnans dat in prczmium.
And of the absoluteness of this self-giving, of the
utterness of this devotion, bread is a more eloquent
symbol than any other kind of food. For the
animals or fruits that we use for food have, in
themselves, and apart from such use, sufficient
reason for their independent existence but bread is ;
something wholly and entirely consecrated and

devoted to the service of man, and destined to no
other end. Wherefore God spoke to us better of
the love He bore us, and which we should bear
one another, when He gave His Body and Blood
neath the semblances, not of corn and grape, but of
bread and wine.
But more than this; in the very form and manner
in which Christ gives Himself to us in the Eucharist,
His Death on Calvary is set forth and expressed
and thereby called to mind. St. Paul tells us that
in the celebration of these mysteries we show forth
the Lord s Death till He come.
not merely a
It is
commemoration of Christ, but more particularly of

Christ slain. It was in the severance of His Body
and Blood on Calvary that His obedience to the

precept of love culminated, and His life-sacrifice
was completed in loving us unto death. And it is of
this extremity of love that the Mass is a memorial

a reminder to us, and a reminder, if we
may so
say, to the Eternal Father. Therefore under one
species He
has given us His Body sacramentally
separated from His Blood, the "body of the Pasch "
"as it were of a Lamb slain;" and He has

said,
"This is
My Body which shall be given for you, do
this for a commemoration of Me." And then that
we might consider His Death under another aspect,
as fulfilling another prophetic type, after
supper He
took the cup and gave us His outpoured Blood,
sacramentally separated from His Body, saying,
"This is My Blood of the New and Eternal
Covenant
"
referring to the sealing of the ancient

Covenant by the sprinkling of sacrificial blood. For
the Old Law which conditioned the contract between
Israel and God was now fulfilled and absorbed in
the New Law of that Fraternal Love, which is
"the
fulfilling of the Law."
Each part of the sacrament then is, according to

the Gospel, a commemoration of His Death. But
though they seem very independent of one another
according to the account there given us, where
a considerable
interval of time seems to have
separated the offering of the Sacred Body from
that of the Precious Blood,
yet the Church has
always joined the two as forming together in one
and more perfect memorial of the
sacrifice a fuller
Death of Christ. For the destruction of any unity
is brought home to us more
forcibly when we see all
its severed fragments together, than when we see
any one of them singly. But however essential the
34 o THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
two-fold presentment of Christ s Death may be for

the integrity of the commemorative sacrifice, yet
the Church has never insisted on the necessity of
two-fold reception for the validity of sacramental
communion, and in the West has had reason to
insiston its non-necessity. For though bread and
wine answer symbolically to the severed Body and
Blood of the slain Christ, and therefore perfect the
symbolism of the commemorative sacrifice, and
though the nutrition of the body symbolizes that of
the spirit, yet the distinction between food and
drink has no application to spiritual sustenance
which may be conceived equally under either meta
phor; and as there is no distinct grace signified, so
neither is any distinct grace conferred the hunger
and thirst of the soul being but two aspects of the
same thing. Thus Christ says He that cometh to
:
"
Me shall never hunger; he that believeth in Me shall
never thirst," where "coming" and "believing"

answer to eating and drinking, and yet mean one
and the same thing. Also He blesses those who
hunger and thirst after justice; where hunger and
thirst are but two figures for one and the same
spiritual craving. So, the grace signified and con

veyed by either sacrament being one and the same,
one receives no more from both than from one just ;
as one receives no more from two Hosts than from

one.
The Mass is therefore a commemorating of
Christ s Death, that is, of the extremity of His love.
And the end or object of this commemoration is

thanksgiving. It is the essence of gratitude to
remember the love bestowed

upon us to keep it ;
always in on the
mind, to linger thought and draw
from it new delight, to
stimulate our wavering
trust, to feed our flagging love. As an absolute and
independent sacrifice the Mass may be offered in
gratitude for any or every favour but as a comme;
morative sacrifice it was instituted as an Eucharist

or Benediction whereby we bless and thank God,
who gave us His only-begotten Son to be the Bread
of Life. As at the Pasch it was customary to
rehearse the long history of God s ancient mercies
to Israel, culminating in the deliverance from Egypt,
and in the institution of the feast itself, so in our
Eucharist we commemorate our deliverance through
the Death of Christ, preceded by the inauguration
of the new Pasch we lovingly record how
;
on the "
day before He He
took bread and broke
suffered
and said This :
My Body
is which shall be given for
you. Do this for a memorial of Me."
In what sense can we say then that the Blessed

Eucharist is the same sacrifice as Calvary ? Plainly
He who offers is the same and what He offers is the
same namely, His Body to be the bread of our
soul. Yet here it is eaten sacramentally, there by
faith ;
as the mode of eating, so the mode of offering
is different. There He was slain once and for all ;
here He becomes sacramentally present again and

again, upon our altars. Yet we may not suppose
that Christ left this earth with His sacrifice
unfinished, and needing to be completed through
the centuries of the Church s history. As far as the
sacramental giving of Himself was concerned, He
34 2 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.
gave Himself at the Last Supper in virtue of the

consecrating words once and for all. It is in virtue
of that act and those words that every Eucharist is
offered. Every host and chalice was before His
mind at that moment. It is the distributing of the
effects of that act which stretches to difference of
place and time even as a grant of royal bounty
which isgiven in one word may take months before
its effects are realized in every corner of the kingdom.
Each hand which receives it, receives it from the

King, as though he gave it then and there. And
so every Eucharistic self-offering of Christ was
included in that total self-offering which began with
His conception and ended on Calvary. It is but
a part of that gift of Himself which He gave at the

Last Supper the part that was put aside and
;
reserved for us here and now, for you and for me.
And though as a commemoration each Eucharist
represents, expresses, and re-enacts Calvary, yet
absolutely it is a different self- offering, or at least a
different part of the entire giving of Himself from

birth to death. It is, then, a renewal of the memory
of His Passion recolitur memoria Passionis ejus not

a renewal of the Passion itself. Being raised from
the dead, He dieth no more.
And whatis the Passion of Christ, if not the
history of such a passion of love as the heart of

man has never mastered the passion of God for
the soul of man, His Spouse, His Beloved for her ;
who will not believe in His love, but repels it and

sins against it. That God should count man His
friend and die for him, were mystery enough ;
but
that we, being yet enemies, Christ should die for us

to make us His friends, that He should not only
shed His Blood for us, but for the remission of our
sins against Himself, is a measure of love past all
measure.
The word "passion" means suffering; and even
when we speak of the passions of the soul we imply
that we are to some extent passive and helpless
under their influence they seize hold of us, if we let
;
them, and trouble us and shake our physical frame

to its foundations, even as if we were possessed by
an alien spirit for the time being. So it is with
when they get the
anger, or fear, or joy, or love,
mastery over us. When we speak of the Passion of
Christ we commonly understand the pains inflicted
upon Him by His enemies the blows and scourg-
ings and wounds, the insults and indignities, the
vinegar and gall. We forget too readily that all
His Passion was self-inflicted. Thou wouldst not
"
have any power against Me," He says to Pilate,

were it not given thee from on high and
" "
; :
I have power to lay down My life and to take it

"
up again no man taketh it from Me."

What is this Spirit that has mastered Him, and
possessed Him, and driven Him on to death ?
What is it that has worn Him away, and tortured
Him and rent Him with scourges and nails and
;
thorns and parched Him with thirst and broken

; ;
His Heart and deluged the earth with His Blood,

;
not the power of that love wherewith He loved us

if
inobedience to the New and Eternal Precept of the

New and Eternal Covenant, wherewith the Father
Himself hath loved us, and hath willed that we

should love one another ? This the passion, the
is
love which we commemorate ;

this is the theme of
our Eucharistic praise; this is the love which we
pledge ourselves and strengthen ourselves to imitate
as often as we, being many, are made one bread
and one body by partaking of that one Bread. Let
.a man prove himself, therefore ;
and so, let him eat.
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
"
Ah, but a man s reach should exceed his grasp,

"
Or what s heaven for ?

"
Browning.
AN idealist, as here understood, is a man of ideals.

An idealmore than an idea, in two ways at least
is ;
for it stands in some sense for the archetype from

which things are copied, and to which they ought
to be conformed, rather than for a mental image
derived from things as they are. The proper locus
of ideals is the Divine mind they are in our
;
if
mind, it is thence we have borrowed them, and not

directly from experience. Again, an ideal is an
object of love no less than of thought. It is some
thing whose contemplation rests, satisfies, delights
the mind and which the will longs to realize, and
;
make actual, wherever it should be realized and

made actual. For
practical purposes of discussion,
be sufficient to say that
"
will Idealism is the

"
it
conception and the love of what ought to be; or

better still, it is the love of ideals, the aspiring after
perfection.
There are high ideals and low ideals, according
to the cast of various minds, and their greater or
less power of transcending experience and of rising
towards the spiritual and divine. And there are
346 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
right and wrong

ideals, according as the conception
is or not duly founded in the nature of things.
is
A high ideal may be chimerical and impossible. It

may involve contradictions and absurdities, not
apparent to our limited view. Not all that is "
high is holy," says a Kempis,

"
nor is every desire

pure."
That a man should live in unbroken,
conscious union with God here on earth, may be
ideal, but it is not possible or desirable in the
concrete. It is the state of angels and disembodied
spirits, but not of flesh-clad mortals. A society of
free agents in which every member should perform
his part faultlessly and perfectly, and in which no
energy or talent should be wasted or misapplied,

becomes more and more chimerical in proportion to
the number of its members, the complexity of its
organization, the multitude and difficulty of its aims.

Still, the "ideal" in such cases is not without its
use, provided it be recognized rather as determining

the direction of our efforts than as fixing a possible
goal. term to approximate to indefinitely
It is a
without ever hoping to attain. Whereas were one
to aim not merely at the perfect subjection of the
imagination to the reason,
flesh to the spirit, of the
of the emotions to the will, but at the complete
elimination of the lower in the interest of the
higher, such an ideal would be positively false and
wrong, since human perfection lies in an adjustment
and harmony of the two. And the same is to be
said of the relation of Nature to Grace, and of the
State to the Church, and of the members to the
head where a false idealism is very possible, very
;
IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE. 347
frequent, very pernicious, fruitful in all manner

of fanaticism, and followed usually by a reaction
towards the opposite extreme.
A man may have an ideal for himself and for his
neighbour for individuals, and for associations of
;
individuals.
With first dawn of reason, conscience sets
the
before us some more or less vague and imperfect
notion of what we ourselves ought to be and the ;
unspoilt heart stirs itself to desire and realize this

ideal. In some ways it is as yet a crude and
childish ideal ;
especially as regards the remote
future ; even as the child s view of the world is
hazy, imaginative, and even grotesque as to all
outside the narrowest field of clear vision. It knows
what it is to be a
good child to-day; but it has no
idea what it to be a
good youth or a good man.
is
Conscience does not bewilder us with more light

than we need for present emergencies or terrify us ;
with burdens we cannot bear now. Sufficient to

the day is the evil thereof. When we follow its
light faithfully it leads us ever nearer to its source,

and therefore into clearer light. The ideal of the
conscientious man grows each day fuller, higher,
and more clearly defined, whereas he who violates
conscience, even if, from a desire to justify
himself, he does not, as usually happens, wilfully
pervert his moral judgment, at least ceases to
and seek for further light. He knows
love, desire,
perhaps what he ought to be, and what he is not ;
but he has lost all love of his ideal. The light

remains in his mind, but it is powerless to kindle
34 8 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
his will and since a man

;
is what he wills, such a
one is no longer an idealist.
As regards
others, it is easier to retain one s
idealism, even as it is easier to lay burdens on other
men s shoulders than to touch them with one s own
finger. It is pleasant to prescribe a regime for
another, especially if we have power and authority
to force upon him. An ideal is not realized
it and
born into the world without pain and travail ; but
when the pain is to be borne by another, and not
by ourselves, the fear of it does not warp our
judgment nor thwart our will. When our neighbour
fails of his ideal, or rather of our ideal in his regard,
we are not so tempted to justify him at the expense
of truth, as we are to justify ourselves. Hence it
comes to pass that one who isby no means an

idealist in his own regard, may, like many a
reformer, be enthusiastically ideal in relation to
others, and may exhibit an apparently heroic
unselfishness and benevolence in seeking for others
those blessings on which he himself does not seem
to place very much value.
It be, indeed, that retaining a very clear
may
idea of what people and institutions ought to be, a
man is simply too selfish, too indolent, too unsocial,
to care very much whether this ideal be realized or
not ; be that through sourness, disappoint
it may
ment inor like motives, he may envy and
self,
grudge to others any excellence that he himself has

not attained. But such a man is not an idealist,
because, as has been said, his will is not kindled by
his ideals.
When under the notion of a man s ideal, we

comprehend all that he thinks ought to be, not only
in himself, but in the whole moral world (where
ought has its full meaning), it is plain that

"
alone "
his ideal must, as long as he lives, be subject to a

continual process of modification, either for better
or for worse, or even for both under different
respects. It is no less plain that, however men s
ideals may agree as to certain simpler matters of

chance of their agreement grows smaller
detail, the
as the matters become more numerous and com
plicated ;
so that in the comprehensive sense of the
word used above, no two men can have the same
ideal. They may agree as to the general end of
human as to the general nature of human
life,
perfection, individual and social, but they will differ

when the picture is to be filled in in detail. Still
more they differ as to the means through which
will
the end to be effected, seeing that many divergent
is
paths may converge to the same centre. Wisdom,

therefore, no less than charity, demands great
liberality and toleration in regard to such differ
ences.
There cannot be much divergence of opinion as
to the requirements of an ideal turnspit, but the
necessary qualifications of a perfect cook are matter

for endless dispute. And so, as we ascend upwards
from the simpler to the more complex, from the
shoeblack to the monarch, from the family to the
Church or State, our ideals become more disputable
as well as harder to realize.
Whence come our ideals ? They are evidently
not directly derived from those actualities and facts

with which they are always contrasted in our
thought. Yet they are undoubtedly suggested by
facts. is as when we guess the mind of one
It
who stammers or expresses himself very imperfectly,
and put his thought into exact language. God is
everywhere striving to express the ideals of His
Divine mind through creatures, and if the limita
tions of the physical world necessarily impede their
full utterance, still more does the pervertible free
will of man mar the worthy expression of God s

moral attributes human life. Yet there is always
in
some hint of the Divine intention from which we
can build up our ideal, as we can complete a curve
if we know the law of its formation. There is
nothing nature perfectly straight or perfectly

in
circular, yet I have a clear and true notion of a

straight line and of a circle. From the perfection
of one feature, or one limb, or one characteristic, I
can put together a notion of perfect beauty and
grace and character, just as the palaeontologist can
ideally reconstruct an animal from the inspection of
a single bone or tooth. Were every member in a
society or a state to fulfil his office as faultlessly as
a certain few do, we should be presented with an
ideal society. Indeed, our notion of God Himself
is in some sense an ideal built on our
experience of
limited and finite perfections. In fine, we may
say that all our ideals are from God, who strives
unceasingly to express Himself in our soul and as it

were to reproduce the conceptions of His infinite
mind in our finite mind ; who, through the defective,
stammering language of creatures and of human

conduct, hints and suggests to our understanding
that perfection which He has created us to attain.
And it is because in a measure He depends on
our free co-operation for the realizing of His ideals
and intentions with regard to human life, that He
makes us thus sharers in His aspirations, treating
us not as servants, but as friends.
Idealism is the motive power of all progress.
It the want of something better just
is
dangling
within our reach, which lures us on to exert our
selves, only to find, when we have attained it, that
the satisfaction of one want gives birth to
another,
and that of receding horizons there is no end. In
economics this raising the standard of comfort is
"
"
a necessary factor of progress in "
comfort-produc
tion," which, in a materialistic and gross-minded
age, is the ideal of national felicity. But whatever
the true ideal be, it is through dissatisfaction with
the present and the conception of a
possible better
ment that improvement is inaugurated.
Christianity
bids men
be content with a comparatively low
standard of physical comfort and of animal
enjoy
ment, with the simple sufficiencies of health and
strength, that their energies may be free for worthier
ends. It strives to make them dissatisfied with the
baser aesthetic, moral, and
spiritual ideals, and to
raise their aspirations
indefinitely towards the best,
and towards God. But in all cases alike, it is the
idealists who draw the
laggard multitude after them
onward or upward, even as a man is slowly but surely
drawn after his own ideal, so long as he holds to it.
It is most important by all possible means to

kindle and foster, both in ourselves and in others,
this fire of idealism which is the source of, all
spiritual energy and so much the more because

;
the world, the flesh, and the devil conspire in a

thousand ways to damp and extinguish it. "Blessed
are they that hunger and thirst after justice," is as
great a paradox as any of the beatitudes, it is as
diametrically opposed to the maxims of the world
as the blessing on poverty, or meekness, or purity.
The world solemnly warns us against idealism by
precept and example, and brings all its forces to the
work of lowering our ideals, blighting our hopeful
ness, perplexing our faith, till the last spark of
enthusiasm has been smothered in the ashes of
despair.Fruamur bonis qua sunt, it says. Enjoy
"
what you have, and while you have it. Don t be

ideal ; take life take yourself as you
as you find it ;
find yourself; believe

me, have had experience.
I
I too have had my youth with its golden dreams
and hopes I too have chased the rainbow.

; Now
profit by me, and don t make yourself miserable
by chafing against the inevitable. Be average, if
you like, but don t be ideal."

What and who is this world whom we thus
personify, but the multitude of men which we come
in contact with taken collectively, with its average
opinions, views, sentiments, dispositions, modes of

action ? Everything about it is necessarily average
and not ideal. It acts upon us by the force of
universal and perpetual example or if it formulates;
its principles, its only accredited spokesmen are

those who
represent the average mind and morality.
It only by the presence of a few idealists here
is
and there, sprinkled through the multitude, that

the average is slightly and slowly raised, or at least
saved from sinking continually. They are the salt
of the earth, and the leaven of the mass. The ideal
and the average are deadly enemies, each trying to
destroy the other, though working by different
methods. A thousand idealists yield at last to the
pressure of example and are dragged down to the
level of the average, for one who resists and raises
the average by an infinitisimal fraction of a millimetre.
And what is true of the big world is true of every
little world or society the idealists are the few and
;
the unideal are the many, and between the two a

certain antagonism is inevitable.
In our tender years, when we are almost entirely
dependent on example and tradition for the forma
tion of our mind and character, it
fortunately
happens that our are very elementary and
ideals
imperfect, and our powers of discernment feeble; so

that we are able to look on our seniors with a
wondering worship as embodying and surpassing
our highest notions of wisdom, goodness, and
power but day by day, as experience and reason
;
assert their sway and we begin to observe and

criticize, the support on which we lean fails us
inch by inch, until it comes home to us with dis
agreeable clearness that if we are to stand high we
must so far be ready to stand with a few or even
alone, and that the more we depend on general
example the lower we shall have to fix our ideal,
x
It was a shock to us, and a rude withdrawal of a

trusted support, to find that those who were so
could
rigorous in precept, so severe in chastisement,
be themselves so lamentably deficient in practice.
One by one our idols fell flat on their faces never to
rise again. New ones came to take their places for

a time, but only for a time. Layer by layer the
weakness and wickedness of the respectable average
world was uncovered and exposed to our view ;
and
what we first regarded as painful exceptions came
to be recognized as general rules.
In the face of this gradual awakening, the con
is frequently an abandonment of our early
sequence
ideals and an acceptance of the standards of the
majority. For this we are prepared in most cases
by the failure to realize in ourselves that which
conscience set before us as attainable. At first we
rushed at the task with all the confidence of ignor
ance and inexperience. We thought that to know
was to will ;
that to will once was to will for ever ;
that fervour always at our command. We

was
knew nothing of the slow growth of laboriously
formed habits, of the irregularities of passion, of the
obscurations of the moral judgment, of the protean
diversities of temptation, of the burdensome mono
tony of perseverance. And so we flung ourselves on
the task, to be flung back again and again, baffled,
discouraged, puzzled, sceptical, bitter. While we
still retained our belief in the majority, and regarded
our own case as one of exceptional weakness and

depravity, we were humbled in our own esteem by
our failures and stimulated to be, and to do, what so
many others seemed to be and to do. But when

our eyes were opened to the fact that in our weak
ness we were with the many and not with the few,
this wholesome rebuke and encouragement was
withdrawn, and we were left to fall back largely on

the authority and sanctions of conscience and faith.
If, however, these highest and most imperish
able motives were absent or undeveloped, if the

habits and opinions of others had secretly been our
one rule of conduct all along, then we were rather
relieved than distressed to find ourselves compassed
by so great a cloud of witnesses to the expediency

of an average rather than an ideal standard. We
stifled our conscience with a Securus judicat orbis
terrarum, we accepted the world as the best practical
commentator on the Gospel, and we agreed that
however excellent truth, sincerity, honour, purity,
unselfishness, meekness, humility might be in the
abstract, yet there were necessary limitations in
practical life, and that one should not be extreme,
fanatical, or ideal. Thus we were restored to good
humour with ourselves and with our neighbour, and
found a certain negative peace, not in the satisfac
tion, but in the extinction of our earlier aspirations.
This is precisely the scandal of which it is said,
"Woe to the world because of scandals! It must
needs be that scandals come but woe to him by
;
whom they That

come." the world should be
average is in some sort a necessity and also that it
;
should by the force of its example exert a downward

drag on idealism. Under this aspect it is the enemy
of the better, and the enemy of God, and to be at
peace with it is to be at war with God ; for it is to

cease to struggle upwards and onwards ; it is to let
down stream. the old story of
go and drift It is
the conflict between the flesh and the spirit;

between death and life between nature and grace.
;
In all cases alike, without resistance and conflict

there is no life or growth; and the same lower
forces which rightly managed are serviceable and
helpful, become a cause

of scandal and destruction
when they are yielded to and obeyed. Those who
resist the downward drag of the world and stand
out against it, are strengthened and raised in the
If we can swim, the
very exercise of resistance.
if not, it will drown us.
water will support us ;
It is, therefore, no easy or common thing to carry

our idealism through so many dangers unimpaired ;
so that our judgment shall not falter or recede from

firmness of
its high thoughts or our will relax the
its for all the temptations that urge us to
purpose,
accommodate ourselves to things as they are, rather
than to strive to accommodate things to our notion
of what they ought to be.
But useful and essential as idealism is, it is not
without its dangers. Of these we may notice first
a tendency to a false optimism with regard to our
selves and to other things. For where we are half
conscious of a distressing want of uniformity between
facts and ideals, we may either remedy the evil by
mending the facts, or we may get rid of the distress
by ignoring or forgetting them. A sanguine,
indolent
disposition will be apt to believe too readily that its

ideals have been realized, and to take a complacent
view of things. It will refuse to face disagreeable
truths, or to risk any shock which would rudely

wake it from sweet dreams to sour realities. We
often find Church history or the lives of saints
written in this soothing a priori strain, taking for
granted that what ought to have been, must have
been.
But prejudicial as optimism may be to the truth,
it is never nearly so prejudicial as pessimism, the
child of narrowness and impatience of judgment.
Our sometimes absolutely and intrin
ideals are
sically chimerical sometimes chimerical under

;
existing conditions and circumstances. We often

want hills without valleys shade without sunshine; ;
or else we want to run before we can walk to be ;
strong without exercise virtuous without tempta

;
tion to know without learning

;
to reap without ;
sowing. Above all, we are impatient and will

not wait for the slow processes of growth and
development.
From comes a readiness to condemn
all this
rashly and freely and universally, in the case of

those who hold fast to their ideals and yet are too
much in earnest to wish to be deceived as to facts
or to live in a fool s paradise. In their anxiety to
be sincere they are unjust and wishing to be ;
impartial, they fly from one extreme of unfairness to

another. It is easier and simpler to pronounce
things utterly rotten, than to sift and measure the

true proportion of good and evil it is easier and ;
simpler to impute the evil to free and deliberate

fault, than to discern the fractional part which
free-will playsfrom that which is played by neces

sary conditions and inevitable limitations
it is ;
easier and simpler to say that things are hopeless

and to do nothing, than to find out remedies and to
apply them. Hence, also, a crude belief
in violent
and radical remedies, in wholesale pulling down and

destroying, as a needful preliminary to constructing,
and a disbelief in gradual and noiseless reformations
effected by observing and co-operating with those
forces in nature and man which are ever making for
right. When this temper of mind passes into the
will, it shows itself in the form of cynicism, bitter
ness, uncharitableness in regard both to ourselves
and to others, and in a sour habit of destructive
criticism, which is ever blind, one-sided, and
untruthful.
This embitterment one of the commonest
is
parasites of idealism ;
such as is our love of that
for
which ought to be, such will be our disdainful anger

and impatience with that which is, so far as they
are opposed one to another; unless, indeed, we
are partakers of a higher wisdom and a more
excellent way.
Of this way Christ in His
is our example
relations to Israel, His chosen people, and to
Jerusalem, His chosen city the people

and the
city He had set apart to satisfy a Divine ideal.
The Sacred Scriptures are one unbroken record of

the resistance, active and passive, offered by that stifT-
necked nation to God s loving designs for its glory
and triumph. Stiff-necked and uncircumcised of
"
heart and ear," says St. Stephen, "you

are always
fighting against the Holy Ghost; as your fathers
did, so do
you. Which prophets have
of the
you not persecuted as your fathers did ? God s "
spirit and ideal was always striving to realize itself

in Israel, and In prophets and
striving in vain.
saints and men of good-will it found unimpeded
utterance, and broke forth in warning, rebuke, and
exhortation. But time after time the irritated pride
of the mediocre, average multitude rose up in wrath
against the idealist and silenced him for ever. Last
of all, coming to them in His own Person, Christ
was received with distrust and hostility, as an
enemy of existing traditions and was cast out and
;
crucified. Surely if ever one had a right to be

bitter and pessimistic it was He. Yet His love for
His chosen people seemed to suffer no diminution
from first to last. O Jerusalem, that killest the
"
prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee,

how oft would I have gathered thee as a hen gathers
"
her chickens under her wing, but you would not !
These are the words of sorrow and disappointment,

if you will, but not of bitterness of grief, indeed,
;
but of a grief born of love. Again, little as our

Saviour could sympathize with the spirit and the
tactics of the rulers of Israel, fierce as was His
indignation against individuals and cliques, yet in
no way was His loyal reverence to the law diminished
in consequence of the unworthiness of its adminis
trators or the perversity of its interpreters. Nay, it
was for His fidelity to the letter and spirit of the
law that He died excommunicate.
As He stood over the city and wept at the tragic
contrast between its present glory and its impending

ruin, when not one stone should be left upon
another, His thought was rather of that spiritual
ruin whereof the temporal was but the symbol He ;
wept, as so many of His servants and prophets had

wept, over a shattered ideal. may well pause We
and ask ourselves what there was in Jerusalem as it
then was, that the Heart of Christ still clung to.
Was it merely the ideal Jerusalem that He loved
and longed for ;
or was the existing perversion of
that ideal still dear to Him ? And the question has
more interest for us when we reflect that Jerusalem
isthe type, not only of the Catholic Church, but of
every human soul which is by destiny a city of
peace, a spouse of Christ, a temple of the Living
God. For each soul God has His cherished ideal ;
an ideal one or two) more or less
in all cases (save
disappointed many, shattered

;
in beyond redemp
tion; and yet while life endures, and until the instant
in which the soul steps by its last choice into its
unchanging condition, His love clings to it, follows

it, weeps and laments over it, and cries,
"
Oh, that
thou hadst known and hadst barkened," and, How "
oft would I have gathered thee, but thou wouldst

"
not !
In spite, then, of all her errors, sins, perversities,

apostasies, was no abstract Jerusalem, but the
it
concrete assembly of the sons of Israel, which was

so dear to God and to His prophets. He loved her
as being the offspring and growing embodiment of
an ideal, as tending in virtue of her nature and
constitution towards the fulfilment of that ideal,
even as the soul which animates the child in the

womb and clothe itself with
strives to assert itself
the matured body of perfect manhood. A thousand
circumstances may impede the work of develop
ment but while there is life the imprisoned ideal is
;
there, striving to become real. Nay, rather, it is

the perfect realization in its infancy and weakness.
So it was with Jerusalem, the City of the Great
King, the dwelling-place of His Name so it is ;
with the Holy Catholic Church so it is with

;
the soul of every man. God loves the present

reality for what it is and for what it tends to be and
is capable of being. And the contrast between its
present lowliness and imperfection and that final
glory and greatness towards which it is borne by
the force of its nature, rouses a tender pity in the
Divine Heart, together with a fierce indignation

against those rebel wills of ours which thwart so fair
a growth.
Besides this, Jerusalem was (and is) dear to Christ
for the sake of the fruits had already produced,
it
for the sake of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and
Joseph for the sake of Moses and the saints and

;
the prophets ; for the sake of legions of her children

whose names are unrecorded ; for the sake of the
continual incense of prayer, praise, and sacrifice
which had ascended from her altars through so
many centuries. Even had there been no vestige
of such fruit, what time our Lord wept over the
city had she been then altogether a barren fig-tree,
;
yet was the same tree which in other seasons had

it
yielded so rich a harvest, and which, in virtue of

the vital principle within her, might yield a more

abundant harvest still.
It was for these reasons that He loved and
reverenced that fallen Jerusalem as His Mother;
that He obeyed her law to the letter that He ;
clung to her until she consummated her wickedness

by casting Him off. And in like manner He clings
to the human soul in general, and to each soul in
particular, until the treasure is wrenched with

violence from His wearied grasp. Long after we
have despaired of ourselves, and after the saints and
angels, nay, after the Mother of God herself has
despaired of us, He, "faithful and true," clings to
us still, hoping while a spark of life is left.
Since, then, He is the sovereign and holiest rule
of all judgment and affection, it is in viewing
right
things with His eyes that we shall find clear insight
and peace of mind. From Him we learn to hold
unfalteringly to our best and highest ideals of what
things ought to be, and yet not to be embittered
by the sad contrast often presented by things as
they are.
In the light of His example let us ask ourselves
what, for instance, would be the right attitude of
mind for one living in the midst of the most extreme
ecclesiastical corruption, such as may have prevailed
here and there at the time of the sixteenth century
revolt, or such as does now and then prevail where
the usurpations and interferences of the secular
power sever the local Church from free and
healthful connection with the main body of Catholic
Christendom, and impede the full effects of her
discipline. Let us, for the sake of argument, make

things about as bad as they can be and that is
very bad.
The fact that the tainted and rotten members,
who are the principal agents of this corruption,
should break away from ecclesiastical unity, and
seek an independence favourable to their love of
licence, that they should sell themselves to the
secular power of Egypt for the sake of the flesh-
pots, the leeks and the garlic, is altogether natural
and reasonable. But a revolt led by such men
could not live long for lack of that species veri and
plausibility which can be lent to it only by the
accession of seemingly good and moral men of strict
and regular life, who have turned in disgust from
patent wickedness in high places, and have joined
themselves to what seems to them a movement of
reform. More often, indeed, the reform movement
is actually initiated by these men, and from these
motives ; and when so initiated, is at once utilized
by the baser sort for their own baser ends. On the
other hand, the corruption, which to many is a cause
of ruin and scandal, is an occasion of strength and
resurrection to not a few whose faith is proved and
whose love and hope are deepened by holding out
against the downward drag of universal example.
Hence, as the richest flowers often grow from the
foulest refuse, so the greatest saints have shone out
in the darkest nights of the Church s history.
What, then, should be the attitude of mind of a
good Catholic Christian under such painful circum

stances as we are imagining ? Is he bound in any
sense to love, reverence, and obey the concrete

Church in which he finds himself? or will it suffice
that he retain a love and reverence for the ideal,

giving birth and strength to a hatred and detestation
of the contrasted reality ? There can be but one
answer. Terrible as is the evil and perversion, yet
that which is thus perverted and degraded is by
organic continuity a part of the body founded by

Jesus Christ, a branch of that tree which He
planted, and watered with His Blood. While it
keeps the Catholic faith, and is as yet unsevered
from the centre of unity, it retains its vital principle
and root of recovery, even as does the most degraded
and fallen Catholic who still clings to the faith of
his baptism. It has that in its very nature which
tends, in due conditions, to the realization of the

Divine ideal of the Spouse of Christ. It is part of
the same body of which Christ is the Head, and of
which Mary, with all the apostles, martyrs, con
fessors, virgins,and holy souls on earth and in
Heaven, are members. That wild beasts have
preyed upon it and devoured it may fill us with just
indignation against those through whose fault such

corruption has come about but for the body itself
;
our sentiments should only be those of Christ when

He wept over Jerusalem sentiments of sorrow and
anguish, born of an unalterable love and affection.
Where one has both the power and Divine com
mission to act, and to apply remedies, one is bound
to move heaven and earth in the cause of God but ;
where one is powerless or unauthorized one can but

stand by helpless with Mary at the side of the
Cross and pray. Bonutn, est prcestolari cum silentio

Dei
salutare It
"
is good to wait in silence for the

salvation of Ten thousand are strong enough
God."
to draw the sword with Simon Peter, and to rush

into the midst of Christ s enemies hacking and
hewing right and left, for one who has the strength
to wait and be silent. Doubtless there is a silence
and an expectation, which only means apathy or
indifference, or timidity, where there is nothing to
suppress and therefore no self-suppression or there ;
is the silence of the fatalist. But apart from such

cases it is the weak man who gives way to violence
in speech and action whose first impulse is revolu
;
tion, rebellion, secession it is the strong man who

;
keeps silence and waits and hopes and obeys. They

that take the sword, be it the sword of the tongue
or the sword of steel, perish by the sword violence ;
defeats itself; but the meek possess the earth

because they are the really strong, and because
they husband those energies which the passionate
squander in fruitless impulsiveness. Theirs is the
violence which takes the Kingdom of Heaven by
storm.
Secession, when it is not a work of malice, is the
child of crude thought and moral cowardice. It is
to fly from a temptation which it is our duty to face
and to conquer the temptation of scandal, of seeing
;
ourselves deprived of the support of public example

and edification, and left in comparative isolation as
idealists and dreamers. It is the act of a soldier
who deserts, lest he should be involved in the defeat
of his regiment which he foresees, or share the
in his duty or is it the

suspicion of having failed ;
act of a son who denies and disowns the mother

that bore him, lest he should be partaker in her
disgrace ? It is, therefore, shirking the conse
quences of our contract of membership, which

requires that we should be willing to share evil
things no than good things in common with

less
others; and which holds, like the marriage-bond,

"for richer, for poorer; for better, for worse; in
sickness, or in health till death us depart."
;
Little as we may like it, we are of necessity social
beings, and our life and lot is bound up

with the
life and lot of others, whose burdens we have to
bear even as they have to bear ours. We may

secede from the Church because of scandals, lest we
should be rated according to the average of its
public, but we cannot secede
from our membership
with the human family, or disown our ineffably
close brotherhood with the erring multitudes of our
Father s children. If we isolate ourselves from the
multitudes, we isolate ourselves from God.
But if the weak no lessthan the wicked fall
away in such crises, the strong stand firm and by
resistance become stronger ;
and the love that holds
them back strikes root yet deeper in their hearts ;
even as true affection is called forth in its highest
form by the afflictions, needs, sorrows, and sins of
those we love. However their hands be tied through
lack of the ability or the authority to correct others,
they know well that the perfection of the multitude
depends chiefly on the perfection of its component
units, and that no change of regimen, no legislation
will bring any remedy unless there be virtue and

probity in those who administer it and in those
who submit to it. Until each member is imbued
with the true ideal of the whole, at least in outline,
and is zealous for its realization in preference to all
isolated and private interests, there will always be
the disorders and diseases that spring from selfish
ness and pride. This, therefore, is the first and
most essential work the intellectual and moral
betterment of individuals one by one a work
effected often quietly and noiselessly at first very
;
slowly, one here and there then with geometrically

;
increasing rapidity as each torch becomes a new

centre for the dissemination of light and heat and ;
the whole face and tone of a community is changed,

we know not how. For it is with growth as with
decay; more depends on individuals than on
systems and men are led by their affections rather
;
than by principles by example and fashion rather

;
than by theories and views.

This being so, there is no question as to the
immediate task which it is in every true reformer s
power to apply himself to vigorously, namely, the
task of self-reformation and this not in an exclusive,
;
self-regarding spirit, as though, in despair of the

republic, one had cynically resolved to live for one s
own highest good, and let the world go its way ; but
in a spirit of true, universal apostolic charity, clearly
recognizing that this is the nearest, the surest, the

most imperative way to help others; and subordinat
ing one s own self-care as a means to that nobler
and greater end. "
First, keep yourself in peace,

3 68 IDEALISM, ITS USE AND ABUSE.
and then you will be able to bring peace to others ;

first be zealous about yourself, and then you will
"
have some right to be zealous about your neighbour

Tene te primo in pace et tune poteris alios pacificare.
Habe primo zelum super teipsum et tune juste zelare
poteris etiarn proximum tuum. This is indeed no easy
task, and the very attempt will teach a man to be
more patient with others. If you cannot make
"
yourself what you fain would be, how can you force
others to be as you would have them ? No man "
is fit to teach others with any effect who has not

learnt teaching by experience. He can
what he is
give directions learnt from a book, he can deal in

phrases, but phrases they are and nothing more.
We do not deny the utility of such repeating-
machines, which is precisely the utility of a book :
but it is nothing comparable to the animating

influence of one who has himself first tried and
failed and then tried and succeeded. This is the
;
secret of a Kempis Imitation or of Augustine s
Confessions, and of the words of saints as contrasted

with the words of scribes.
Speaking now in general of the way in which we
should meet such difficulties and seeming scandals,
whether universal or local, whether in the Church
or in the State, or in particular institutions sub
ordinated to the one or to the other, the first
question we arebound to ask ourselves is Are :
things really as bad as they seem ? Before we

attempt to solve the problem, let us be quite
sure that There is such a thing as
it exists.
subjective colouring; and to the jaundiced eye all

things are yellow. cannot be denied that the

It
prophetic regime and mode of life, with its austerity

and solitude, its introspection and reflection, its
concentration on one only aspect of things, may
tend to dehumanize and pervert the judgment ;
and prophets, whether of the study or of the cell,

would often keep their spiritual vision all the keener
and clearer for an occasional day in the country.
Like round numbers, or sweeping statements and
generalities, extreme views, whether optimist or
pessimist, are much simpler ;when we have neither
the ability, nor the justice, nor the patience requisite
for exact measurements, it saves a deal of trouble
to include all things under a general anathema.
Moreover, the appeal to sensation is not without its
attraction. Mediocrity is uninteresting to contem
plate, but extremes are thrilling. Again, it is just
possible that the particular ideal which we are
pleased to regard as the sole measure of what ought
to be, be but one of many alternatives, all
may
equally good. It may be indifferent whether a
man carries out his chief end in life as a doctor,
or alawyer, or as a merchant and so of a
;
government, or an institution, or an order, there

may be paths indifferently converging to the same
centre. All is not lost because the end is reached
by some path I had not fixed on or dreamt of.
Often our pessimistic estimate of facts has no

other reason than this, that our own ideas have
not been preferred to others equally good or
better. A Tory will never allow that the country
is prospering under a Radical Government; nor
Y
will a Radical Opposition be more generous in its
turn.
If, however, there is still a heavy residue of evils
that refuse to be resolved into phantasms of the
imagination, the next question is as to what pro
portion of them is due to wilful malice, and what to
inevitable circumstances and limitations over which
even the Almighty has no control. Without weaken
ing our belief in the existence of free-will, our self-
experience and our experience of life tends ever to
narrow the sphere in which free-will has action, and
to make
us see that the ocean of apparent iniquity
which deluges the world owes far less to sin, far
more to circumstances, than we had ever thought.
Our early judgments are as a rule narrow and
severe ; and they become gentler and wider in exact
proportion to our experience and reflection.
It would be well, for this reason, to consider that
the end which a society or institution proposes to
itself sometimes very high and very complex,
is
depending on a great number of individuals being

each ideal in his own department and on the ;
exact balance of a very delicate organization, easily

disturbed by the defection of even one member.
A society for the manufacture of match-boxes or
broom-sticks can be very easily organized. The
gifts needed for membership are common and well-
nigh universal. The stimulus to co-operation and

labour is tangible, and one that appeals to the
universal instinct of acquisition. Little marvel if
such a society prospers if it abounds in individuals
;
who arrive at the highest degree of skill in their

profession ;
if all the members co-operate cordially
each for his own interest ; or if there is little
diversity of judgment as to the best mode of

production.
If we
turn, for example, to the Army, or the
Navy, or the Civil Service, the end in view is much
more complex, especially in the last. Still, the
killing of men and the battering of ships the proxi
mate end of the first two is a fairly simple end,
however intricate the machinery brought to bear
upon it. The required for such a service are
gifts
not so very rare. The motives
in most cases are
simply worldly advancement and a good position ;
and were these insufficient to secure faithful service,

the sanction of very tangible penalties is at hand to
supplement Nor has the Govern
their weakness.
ment to go begging for recruits, but has only to pick
and choose the best from the eager crowds that are
pressing into its service from all quarters of the
empire. With these we may contrast the high and
difficult end which the Church (to take the extremest
example) sets before her, a work to be wrought
upon the minds and hearts of men, of her own
subjects and of those to whom they minister. Even
were she only occupied with the secular education
of youth, how difficult and complex are the
problems
suggested by that task, how far from solution, even
in these days of pretended
enlightenment and how ;
few are the men with the requisite learning, how

still fewer those with the more
requisite skill to
form the minds of the young But if in addition to
!
this she aims at the moral and spiritual education

of young and old, and at other ends even more

all,
public and universal, the difficulty becomes indefi

nitely greater. What sort of men ought not they to
be who would minister to the very highest good and
happiness of humanity what almost impossible
;
combinations of gifts and graces are needed How !
scarce even the raw material fit to be shaped for

such purposes how easily spoilt
! in the shaping I
And then the motives which draw men to work for
religion or spiritual ends, if they are higher, yet

being invisible, supernatural, distant, they appeal
to a smaller number, and to those, comparatively
feebly. We
must take men as we find them. It is
only in our exceptional states of vivid faith and
spiritual exaltation that the supernatural tells
on us
effectively and intensely, whereas temporal self-
interest, the love of gain and reputation, act upon
all men at all times. Men of the world have at all
times found cheap and abundant material for caustic
satire in the ludicrous contrast between the profes
sion and practice of those who aim at higher and
more spiritual standards. They forget how easy it
is to be consistent in sliding downhill ; how hard, in
clambering up. When there is no struggle, there is

no cause for weariness and failure nor need he fear
;
a fall who lies flat on the earth. As the height

aspired to is more exalted, so will the percentage of
those who fail in their attempt to reach it be
greater and the failure itself be more lamentable
;
and disastrous. a fallen priest would have

Many
made a respectable layman, or at least would never
have fallen so low and the rottenness of a Catholic
;
country is worse perhaps than that of a Protestant.

For in these cases the forces disorganized are
stronger, and the light sinned against, clearer.
The success of a religious society like the Church
depends ultimately on the extent to which its several
members are imbued with and possessed by the
spirit and enthusiasm of its founder, and this spirit
is difficult to enkindle, and more difficult to sustain.
We have Gospel-warrant for saying that the children

of the world are wiser, more watchful, more energetic
in their interests than the children of God. In a
way it must be so with mortal man with this ;
mixture of spiritual and animal, where the lower

element is so often preponderant. The higher
element in us is the feebler, and our whole task in
life is to develop it laboriously and slowly. It is
easy to be enthusiastic and successful in the things

of the body but hard in things of the soul. Just
;
then as our self-experience convicts us of being

subject to this law of sin in our own individual life,
so we should expect to find it in the world around
us. God s work will be done slothfully, meanly,
unsuccessfully, while temporal interests will be
sharply looked to. Those who enter the active
service of the Church are not chosen by competitive
examination from a crush of eager candidates they ;
have no salary which can be forfeited nor can they

;
be coerced to their duty by physical force or fear.

All depends on spiritual fervour and intelligent
spontaneity. Often, moreover, the public from which

in particular localities the Church has to draw her
recruits, is a very small one, and yet the work to be

done is extensive and diversified. The harvest is
great, but the labourers are few. It therefore becomes

necessary to accept as labourers many who are very
imperfectly qualified for the work, for sheer lack of
hands.
Finally, so far as the Church s work brings her
into relation with the world, the rapid changes in
her environment may demand continual adaptations
and modifications, which are hard to con effect
sistently with the ancient traditions of a world-wide

and necessarily centralized institution which moves
slowly because of its very bulk.
These and a thousand similar reasons ought to
convince us that much of our dissatisfaction is rather
with circumstances than with persons in a word, ;
our quarrel is with Almighty God, and with the

finite nature of things.
If, after eliminating due to these im

what is
personal causes, we still blame and

find matter for
censure, it remains for us to ask whether there may

not be much excuse for such wilful faults as we
seem to have detected humanum est errare, and
;
perhaps a little self-knowledge would dispose us not

to be altogether surprised, if here and there others
misuse the liberty that we ourselves so often misuse.
If we ever expected, we never had a right to
expect to find an ideal state of things in this world.

The Church of the Saints is one in which men
profess to tend to sanctity, not to have attained it.
We not scandalized at the inefficiency of a
are
hospital because we find that all the occupants of
the beds are more or less sick and disabled. We
only require that they should for the most part be

on the road to recovery or at least under medical
;
treatment.
This world is not the place where we are to look
for the ideal. Here and there little glimpses of it
are given us to whet our appetite for higher things,

and to lead us from dissatisfaction to dissatisfaction,
and thence to a desire for the great archetype of all
ideals, in whom at last and alone the Real and the

Ideal are identified.
DISCOURAGEMENT.
"
Great is the facile conqueror,

Yet haply he who wounded sore,
Breathless, unhorsed, all covered o er
With blood and sweat,
Sinks foiled, but fighting evermore
Is greater yet."
Watson.
THE young and the inebriate, according to
Aquinas, have it in common that they abound in
hope that is, so far as hope is classed among the

;
emotions or passions enumerated by Aristotle. The

reason in both cases is to be found in their inability
to estimate the difficulties to be encountered, and
the limits of their own powers and resources an
ignorance due to inexperience in the one case, to
alcoholic influence in the other. Obviously this is
to be accounted foolhardiness rather than courage

the body and semblance of hope without its soul
and substance. For hope as a virtue of the intelli
gence, and spiritual will is no blind optimism, but a
confidence that faces the cruelest facts, unmoved,
undismayed. Ultimately it is grounded in an
unshaken faith as to the eventual victory of truth
over error, of right over wrong, of good (that is, of
God) over evil. Its noblest opportunity is when
the manner of that victory is most obscure and the
DISCOURAGEMENT. 377
odds against it most overwhelming. So far as its
object is the triumph of God in our own soul, a

triumph which depends upon the grace of God and
upon our own co-operation therewith, hope excludes
certainty; for though God is faithful, our will is
incalculably mutable, as we have learnt by past
experience. Yet hope requires that we should
consider our salvation, not merely possible, but as
most probable nay, practically, though not intellec
tually, certain and that the consciousness that we
;
are working out our salvation with fear and

"
trembling" should itself allay that deeper fear which

drives peace from the heart. We cannot be as
certain of salvation as we are of to-morrow s
sunrise ; but it is not enough to hope for it only as
for to-morrow s sunrise, which may be or may not
be who can tell ? Rather, it should be as we hope
for summer and autumn in due season, with a hope
which ignores the scarce appreciable possibility of
disappointment.
But on what is such hope grounded, since God s
fidelity to His promise of needful grace is abso
lutely certain a matter of faith rather than hope ;
while our own co-operation depends on the freaks

of a will whose past history should incline us rather
towards despair ?
It is, however, from a closer study of our past
that we draw sustenance for hope, since there
we see how in all His dealings with us God is not
only just and faithful, but better than His word,
giving more and far more than He had promised.
Day by day uncovenanted graces have been rained
378 DISCOURAGEMENT.
upon us, and it is chiefly through them that we are

what we are it is the mercy of God that we have
"
not been consumed and cast away for our sins.

"
And though we know not the measure or the law

of these quickening showers, we know that in some
sense they are without measure that it is only ;
those who wilfully presume upon them that forfeit

the right to hope in them while the very hoping ;
in them, without presumption, almost merits and

demands them.
If hope s counterfeit is easy when we are young,
when we still think that to know right is to will

right ;
and that to will once is to will for ever ;
s
hope reality are older, when we
is hard when we
have learnt the wide difference between these things,
when time after time we have been beaten back
almost to the very starting-point, and when the
distant hills of our early ideals look further and
more inaccessible than ever still more, when ;
from knowledge of ourselves and of others this

defeat of our hopes is felt to be the result of almost
natural causes, whether working in our own nature
or in the nature of things around us.
"
Was not
ignorance," ask, we
the ignorance of an untaught
"
mind, stranger to the notion of law, confident in the
omnipotence of free-will, the parent of our crude

hopes ? Is it not ruthless knowledge, bitter experi
ence, that has strangled them?
"
Our first repent

ances and recoveries are easy and hopeful, for we
know not how sin has injured us and poisoned our
will our next, more difficult, less hopeful and so
; ;
of the successive efforts, until at last the strongest

DISCOURAGEMENT. 379
stimulus can elicit from us no more than some

sluggish response like faint stirring of a life flicker
ing out.
Then it is that the lethargy of discouragement
supervenes and if a process of rapid decay does
;
not follow at once, if the soul remains in statu qiw,

sulky and sullen, it is only because lethargy is not
death because the discouragement is not absolute
;
;
because there is still, unperceived save by God, a

feeble pulse of hope which fights against death and
despair.
This lethargy and state of supine inaction is
often falsely confounded with that tepidity or half-
heartedness which characterizes those caitiff souls
which Heaven cannot stomach and even Hell
disgorges. But the lukewarm, from the very little
ness of his heart and paltriness of his ideals, is all
self-satisfiedhe winks inwardly for that he has

;
made a sharp bargain with Heaven and has skirted

the edge of Hell without slipping in.
Discourage
ment, on the other hand, is never self-satisfied it is ;
the parasite of idealism. "
Woman, why
weepest
thou ? whom seekest thou ?
They have taken away
my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him."
The discouraged soul sits weeping and disconsolate
by the empty tomb of its hopes, bearing in its hand
the evidence of its good-will in the idle spikenard
and aloes ready for service and worship. It weeps
for what it loves, for what it deems itself to have
lost, and its comforter is never far, though hard to

see through blinding tears.
But although discouragement or despondency
380 DISCOURAGEMENT.
has none of malice and offence of tepidity, and

although it implies good desires and high aspira
tions, still it is in itself something evil, the base
progeny of truth and lie. It is known by its fruit
remissness and heavy listlessness, and perhaps a
certain desperation and recklessness from which
ruin may quickly result. Like a viper whose bite
is death, it cannot be shaken off too soon.
Largely it is the child of ignorance ; ignorance,

that is, of the common
psychological laws which
govern the formation of the human mind and will.
Homo es et non angelus, says a Kempis Thou art "
a man, not an angel yet we are ever

"
impatient
;
and wrathful with the limitations of this poor soul

of ours, in which the highest of the animal order
weds with the very lowest of the spiritual order.
There are forms of sense-life so low that we can
scarce distinguish them from vegetation and so we ;
might fancy God s angels puzzled for clear evidence

of man s spirituality, yet because we can know very
and that with great labour, our wounded vanity
little
spurns all knowledge with a Quid est veritas ? and

because virtue is slow and difficult of growth we
lose patience with it and throw the task aside in
anger. We cry out upon God :

"
Why hast Thou

made me thus ?
"
Some conjecture, not unreasonably, that as the

angelic intelligence, unencumbered by bodily con
ditions which would tie its movement down to time
and space, is and enlightened in the
full-formed
first instant of being so, too, and for the same
its ;
reason, its moral self-formation is effected, once and

DISCOURAGEMENT. 381
for all in the first exercise of its free choice. There

is not, as with us, room for after-thought and
repentance. Light breaks upon us slowly, and God
presents Himself to our choice and love under a
thousand partial aspects before our trial is ended
and death seals our changeless doom. But in the
angels, seemingly, virtue is not the fruit of repeated
acts and elections and trials, but of one full
exhaustive choice, one fearful purgatorial instant,
one fiery trial in which self-love is to be wrenched
out by the roots and burnt up in the flame of Divine
charity.
But because we would be angels and not men,
because we expect more of ourselves than God
expects of us, because our pride revolts against the
necessary limitations of humanity, we fall into
sullen discouragement and since we cannot be all,
and do and have all, we will be nothing, and do
all,
nothing, and have nothing, but will sit with knees

relaxed and idly hanging hands.
Humiliating as it
may be, yet we must accept
the fact that it is the nature of man to learn through
blundering, through making every possible mistake
before the right method is discovered. know We
it, whether as teachers or learners, in the
acquisition
of any art, or
skill, or science, where we graduate
our exercises so as to deal first with one then with
another of the innumerable ways of
going wrong.
Again, we do not think it enough to have over
come the same difficulty once, but we repeat and
repeat, till conquest has become a habit, and
only then do we turn our attention to some other
382 DISCOURAGEMENT.
enemy. practice alone can any sort of skill be

By
created, maintained, and increased and so it is
;
with that moral skill we call virtue. It seems to

some that they are deluding themselves, that they
cannot be sincere in their resolves, because they
are morally certain that they will fall again. In
other words, they think a habit can be created by
one act. Supernaturally it might be so, were the
act one of intense and fervid love melting and
moulding the soul in an instant such a purgatorial
act as that by which the angels fix their unchanging
state but ordinarily and naturally it is not so and
; ;
as one learning to draw, or to write, or to play,

desires in all sincerity to succeed and not to blunder,
and yet is morally certain that blunder he will and
must, and that many and many a time so it is
;
with regard to the uprooting of any evil habit or

the acquisition of any good habit. We
are not
insincere because we are certain we shall fall again,
if only at the present moment we do not want to
fall and lament the prospective fall, and are resolved

not to cease endeavouring in spite of a thousand
falls. For this is what perseverance means for us
mortals not an unbroken record of victories, but a
dogged purpose of going on though we should
stumble at every step and of this it is said,
;
that "he that shall persevere to the end shall be

saved."
This very saying contains a thought which on

the whole makes for encouragement rather than
discouragement, and is well worth developing. For
it implies that in His judgment of us God looks not
DISCOURAGEMENT. 383
to the success, but to the endeavour; not to what we

have attained, but what we would attain. The
Samaritans would have nothing to do with our Lord
because His face was set as though He would go
"
to Jerusalem not because He was in Jerusalem,

"
but because He was as good as there, for He was

there in will and purpose and firm resolve. And
the world, in like manner, counts those lost to its
own cause, and won to God s, whose face is set to
go to Jerusalem, the city of peace. In this, as in
many other things, the world s instinct and intuition
is right, for God, too, takes the will for the deed.
We are what we will. He who sincerely wills (that
is, loves) purity and patience, or faith, or any other
virtue, already possesses it as to its most essential
and inward part ; for all human virtue is
primarily
of the will. That it should pass beyond the will
and embody itself in our outward conduct, in those
faculties subject to the will that we should be pure ;
and brave and patient, not in sincere merely resolve,

but also effectually in our words and
actions, belongs
to the integrity of the virtue it is the
body of the ;
virtue, but not its soul. The soul is the principle

of life, which slowly draws to itself
apt matter from
the environment and weaves it
gradually and
laboriously into a body meet for its own service
and self-manifestation. The soul can live without
the body, but the body without the soul is dead.
And so it is with the soul and body of virtue with ;
the purpose and the attainment.

In this we are not
countenancing indifferentism
" "
in morals, or
approving the maxim, that it matters
384 DISCOURAGEMENT.
not what we do so long as we mean well. Because

it matters less, it does not cease to matter very
greatly nor can any one who thinks it matters

;
little be really said to mean well." To "mean

well" is to be sincerely resolved to procure the
entire reformation and perfection of our conduct, so
that the "body"
of our spiritual and moral life shall
"
*
be the exactest possible expression of the soul.
To mean the truth and yet to lie in ignorance is far

better than to mean a lie and yet blunder upon the
truth. But no one sincerely means the truth who
a material
speaks at random on the supposition that
lie is of no consequence whatever.
Again, when we say God takes the will for the

deed, we are not speaking of mere "velleity," but of
will, not because it
"
what is called
"
efficacious
actually effects its desire, or succeeds in its purpose,

but because the failure through no lack of will.
is
A close prisoner may have a most efficacious will

to escape. Stone walls and iron bars prevent his
will from taking effect but let these be removed,
;
and the impeded force of his resolve at once becomes

effectual. A "velleity"
is not a resolve that actually
exists in the soul, but one which would exist were it
not excluded by some incompatible resolve. I want

to possess a certain book, but I am not willing to
pay the price, though I could do so. In short, I like

the book but I prefer the money ;
and the resolve to
keep my money excludes the resolve to get the
book. do not
I actually will to have it, but I would
will to have it, were it not for this other will.
Similarly a man may will patience or purity and

DISCOURAGEMENT. 385
fail to realize either because he could

it, pay the
price but is unwilling, or because, being quite ready
to pay the price, he has not got it to
pay, but must
toil and labour and economize, and perhaps die,
before he can effect his purpose. The former will
is mere a will that might be, but is not
"velleity"
the latter is that "efficacious will which God "
accepts
for the deed.
Yet even the "velleity," though insufficient, is
good ; a spark of heavenly fire which can be

it is
fanned into a flame or it is the light which God

;
holds to the lamp of our heart that catch

it may
fire and make that light its own. But it is not
enough down with exiled Israel by the waters
to sit
of Babylon and to remember
Jerusalem in the midst
of our tears;it is not
enough to sit with the prodigal
in rags and misery dreaming of the home we have
lost through our folly and madness we must arise ;
and go; we must set our faces

firmly towards
Jerusalem, resolved to tread the weary way, albeit
stumbling at every step, or even perishing on the
road with our vow unaccomplished. This is an
"efficacious" will, though outwardly it were to effect
nothing, but were to fall back dead in the very
effort to arise. In that instant watchful Love would
be at our side from afar to bear us home in
triumph
to the "haven of our desire." Thus it was that
Christ went forth, "
all things that were to

knowing
come upon to
pass through Passion and
Him,"
Death to the bosom of the Father, to the haven of

His desire, with His face set towards that
Heavenly
Jerusalem. Posuifaciem meam, He says, quasi petram
z
3 86 DISCOURAGEMENT.
I have set my face as it were a hard

"
durissimam
rock, firmly, immutably resolved to go through to
the bitter end.
Man, says the Holy Ghost, looks at the outside
of an action, considers the appearance God looks :
at the heart, at the substance and soul of the act, at

the set of the will. Nor is this said to man s blame,
since the surface is all his faculties enable him to
take cognizance of; but it is to warn him off God s
preserves, to remind him that he knows nothing or
as good as nothing of the reality of his neighbour s
conduct, that is, of the motive and merit. In our
judgment of human conduct, of the relative merits
and goodness of men, we must be agnostics and
positivists we must keep ourselves to the obser
;
vation and record of what appears, and relegate

motives and merits to the region of the unknown
and unknowable. Much as God cares for the recti
tude of our outward conduct, yet the " "
goodness
of men as such, that which makes a man good,
is simply and only the goodness of his will.
As he may be a good statesman or soldier or
scholar or without being a good man
citizen ;
so, too, he possess natural or acquired moral

may
perfections without being really a good man, or
as good as another who lacks all such ethical
adornments. The penitent in the first instant of
his sorrow when, with all his vices and evil habits
still clinging to him like
rags, he rises and sets his
face towards Jerusalem, may be before God a better
man than one whose moral propriety is the fruit of
happy temperament, of careful education, of easy
DISCOURAGEMENT. 387
and immunity from tempta

graceful surroundings, of
tion. These and natural graces are of
facilities
course compatible with the highest heroism of good
will, but they must not be confounded with it. The
cripple may be able to stand without his crutch, but
it is hard to tell till it is taken
away. Here at least
we can say Behold we know not anything."
:
"
We
see two men struggling for life in the angry surf,
one sure of victory, the other of defeat; yet who
shall say that the will to live is stronger in the
former than in the latter; or that it may not be
precisely the reverse. And so God looks on ship
wrecked humanity struggling for salvation against
lust and anger and sloth and weakness and all the
powers of evil, and where we see defeat He often

sees victory, for the will that is the least effectual is
sometimes the most "efficacious" and earnest.
We are safe in saying This man has fallen ten
:
"
times, the other a hundred times." But God may

know that the former at every temptation on
fell
every occasion ; while the latter resisted a thousand

temptations for the hundred he yielded to. Not
we enter
till into the secret of a man s will, not till
we know all the antecedents of his
the precise life,
measure of his knowledge and understanding, the
exact condition of every nerve and muscle, the lie
and correlation of all the cells of his brain, the
composition and heat of his blood, in fine, the
infinity of conditions under which he acts, can we
venture in our criticism of his action
beyond a
"positivist" statement of what is external and
-apparent. Human society rightly demands that we
3 88 DISCOURAGEMENT.
should compare and treat men as good or evil in

the light of their outward behaviour, and legislates
to secure the outward act while careless about
good-will save as a means to that end but we must ;
"
remember that this is after all a

"
legal estimate
belonging to the forum extermtm of public opinion,
and is no guide to the ranking of guests at God s
table, where good-will is everything.
"
When thou
art invited," says Christ,
"
sit down in the lowest
place ;
"
that is, be on the safe side and rank

yourself last before God, since you have absolutely
no certain grounds fora more flattering supposition.
"
"
It will do you no harm," says a Kempis, to place
yourself last of all. It will harm you much to
prefer yourself even to the least."
By introspection in some measure know

we can
ourselves absolutely, but not relatively as compared
with others. We
can be certain of much infidelity
to grace, of repeated falls and backslidings, of
habitual half-heartedness, of great need of God s
indulgent patience and mercy but when we would ;
contrast ourselves favourably with Sodom and

Gomorrah, or Tyre and Sidon, let us withhold our
judgment, on the Divine assurance that it will be
more tolerable for them in the Day of Judgment
than for Corozain and Bethsaida and Capharnaum ;
and let us forbear to "judge

before the time." The
only thing that God has told us of the issue of that
day should seal our lips: "The last," He says,
"shall be first, and the first last;" all our conjectures
and anticipations shall be confounded and set at

naught.
DISCOURAGEMENT. 389
But will not God judge men by their works, and

not by their aspirations and wishes ? Is not Hell
paved with good intentions ? With inefficacious

intentions, yes; with
" "
velleities never brought to

the birth, never shaped into resolutions and deter
minations. The works of man, like his nature, are
compounded of inward and outward and the ;
inward is principal. It is by the acts or works of

our will we are saved and judged nor do outward ;
acts or works count for aught save as quickened

by
the inward act while the latter can subsist alone,
;
where the former are impeded or distorted.

God, therefore, looks to what a man would be
at, to the direction inwhich his face is set, to the
sincerity of his endeavours and struggles; and not
to where he is on the road, or to the extent of his
success.
In all this there is contained both
warning and
encouragement ; warning against any disposition
to usurp God s prerogative of judging men s hearts
by comparing them with ourselves or with one
another in
regard to the internal goodness of their
will encouragement against a too depressing view
;
of ourselves or of the world at large.

Deluged as
the world is with every kind of moral disorder and
irregularity of conduct, deplorable as such a state
of things is to those who have God s
Kingdom and
glory at heart, yet it may well be that the worst
evil of all, the internal evil of
the will, is in no way
coextensive with that outward material evil which is
apparent.
Again, in estimating the effect of the sacraments
3QO DISCOURAGEMENT.
and means of grace upon ourselves and others, we

are often surprised to see so little fruit just because
we do not know what to look for. It is in the
maintenance and increase of good desires and
purposes that grace is directly perceptible, and not
always in the effectual and speedy correction of
outward conduct. If we find ourselves as resolved
as ever, and more so, to go on fighting and correcting
ourselves our faults displease us even more
;
if
vehemently, then, even though they resist our

efforts time after time, we are really progressing, or
at least we are not going back. Nay, even though
instead of making head against the current we are
carried down stream, it may be because the current
is stronger, and not because we are struggling less.
Had we not gone on struggling where should we be
now; how much worse should we be than we
actually are ?
He, then, that shall persevere to the end shall be

saved, he whose face is ever set towards the goal,
who if the fixed eye of his intention blink an
instant through frailty or heaviness, recovers himself
promptly, without discouragement to begin again.
Perseverance does not imply one vehement act
of resolve followed by an unbroken record of steady
progress it is not so that habits are formed ; but
;
by alternations and oscillatory movements, as when

the tide creeps slowly in with rhythmic ebb and
flow till all the sand is covered or as when a fire
;
is and blazes up and then burns low

fed with fuel
and must be fed anew; or as \vhen a little dog
follows his master, now lagging behind to be
DISCOURAGEMENT. 391
whistled to heel, now running ahead to be recalled

again, and at last reaches home having travelled the
distance many times over. There is a like ebb and
flow in the tide of our spiritual progress there are ;
times of renewal and fervour followed by times of

chill and slackness ; now we are lingering behind
our Divine Master, now racing ahead discouraged ;
one moment, overconfident the next. Yet if we but

persevere, we shall in the long run reach home,
breathless and weary through our own folly, with
graces innumerable wasted and squandered, but
through the mercy of God safe.
It is this humiliating but natural inconstancy of
the human will that we have to recognize calmly
and reckon with. "Were man but constant,"
could he but fix and perpetuate his nobler moods

by a single act of will, he were perfect." It is
"
only by slowly inducing good habits that we can

counteract this natural limitation, and cause a sort
of artificial constancy, and this can only be effected
through perseverance, of which discouragement is the
great enemy. Discouragement is always surprised
and resentful as the law of our moral growth makes
itself felt in repeated failures and blunders. It
makes new resolves only as long as it can do so
with a belief that there is never to be another
relapse and when self-experience makes this belief
;
no longer possible, it ceases to resolve. It does not

know that perseverance means a dogged purpose of
beginning again and again until a habit is formed.
Forgetting the things that are behind, and
"
hastening to those which are before, I press forward

392 DISCOURAGEMENT.
to the mark," says St. Paul. A child s first effort

to riseand walk is followed instantly by a fall, and
this by a few brief tears; and then the fall is
forgotten and the effort repeated. Were the child

capable of memory and of a false prudence, it would
never try again, but taught by Nature s wisdom it
learns after many falls to stand, to walk, to run
about and so if after a brief act of sorrow we
;
profit
by our experience and rise at once to begin again,
our falls will do us good instead of harm, and we
shall learn, not only to walk, but to run in the
way
of God s commandments.
Nor does any wise, loving mother stand by and
watch the efforts of her little one with such tender
ness and carefulness as God watches us as we
struggle and fall again and again ever at hand to
raise us up and console us and
encourage us to
begin afresh. What folly and mistaken kindness
it would be were the mother never to allow her
babe to risk the pain of a fall, but to

carry it always
in her bosom. God knows that there is no other
way for us to learn but
by experience, that pain and
failure instruct and stimulate us. It is not when
the pupil s hand is held and
guided by the teacher
and kept faithful to the headline that he learns and
progresses, but when he is left at liberty to struggle
alone. Doubtless there is an excess of liberty that
tempts us beyond what we are able, and calls for
more strength and skill than is yet even latent in
us ;but it is the part of the wise educator to
graduate his lessons, to see that we get enough
liberty to help us and not enough to harm us. So
DISCOURAGEMENT. 393
it is that God schools us by carefully adjusted trials

and temptations and failures, that we may learn to
become self-guiding, self-supporting, with that right
independence which is the special dignity of free,
intelligent creatures, own destiny
masters of their
saving always the assistance of Divine grace, which
is to us food, light, and air. In the order of grace
as of nature, all evolution is the work of difficulty
and opposition, a truth verified by the common
observation tha.t the greatest saints have arisen in
the corruptest ages. It is by temptation that God
draws out all that is best in us, according to a law
which may well be as necessary as the Divine
Nature itself.
But in truth we have no business to look for so
steady and even a progress as some of the foregoing
illustrations might seem to imply. For there are
disturbing conditions in ourselves and outside us
which make it difficult to judge our advance save
by the state of our interior will. It is only in the
will-habit that we have a right to look for smooth,
steady progress, and even there it is very difficult to
gauge it. Were all the objective and subjective
conditions precisely the same, we might reasonably
expect to see a steady improvement in our outward
conduct ; but except in the very simplest matters
this is never the case. It is not usually more
difficult one day than another to say grace at meals
or to perform some little exterior devotion but it is ;
not at allthe same with regard to patience or keeping

one s temper for here much depends on the state
;
of our nerves, on our weariness or freshness, our

394 DISCOURAGEMENT.
power of attention and self-control, and still more

on the quite incalculable frequency of the occasions
of victory or failure that may present themselves,
so that often our seeming worst days are really our
best,and vice versa; and when, as far as outward
conduct goes, we are apparently relapsing, it is often
then that the inward acts are most multiplied and
the will-habit most strengthened and the advance
most real. It is, in fact, almost as rash to judge
ourselves by our outward conduct as it is to judge
others. We
may, indeed, judge ourselves by the
attitude and set of our will, but of this we must not
too readily take our conduct as an index. "
Know
thyself"
is doubtless a precept of thehighest
wisdom but as there is no folly like fancied self-
;
knowledge, so perhaps he is the wisest of all who

knows that he does not know himself, but has learnt
to say with St. Peter Lord, Thou knowest
"
: all
things."
Again, we must remember that habits are formed

rapidly or slowly according as they favour or oppose
our natural bent. It does not follow that because
an evil habit is contracted in a month that it can be
cured in a month nor because a good habit has
;
been formed after years that it cannot be uprooted

in a week. Also, of good habits, some are more
opposed to our inclination than others, and therefore
take longer to form.
Once more, if we are really faithfully struggling
after better things, it cannot but be that our
standard of perfection and holiness will insensibly
be raised higher and higher as we come to know
DISCO URA CEMENT. 395
more of the spirit of Christ and His saints while ;
at the same time a growing self-knowledge reveals

to us a thousand weaknesses which we were uncon
scious of when we first addressed ourselves to the
closer service of God. Hence we necessarily will
seem to be much further from our ideals than when
we first set out to reach them ; though, in truth, we
are far nearer in virtue of a truer conception, a
deeper and older love of the Divine will, a profounder
knowledge, a dislike of our own shortcomings. The
beginner in every art, and the novice in the art of
Divine love, flushed with his first successes, is far
better pleased with himself than the skilled pro
ficient he is far nearer in imagination to the
;
attainment of his ambitions. It should also be

remembered that a plant at first shoots
up quickly
while all its energies are concentrated on the pro
duction of a single stalk, but more slowly when they
are dissipated among the many branches which it
afterwards puts forth, until a stage is reached when
growth is imperceptible or again, that a stream
;
runs rapidly and forcibly while its waters are

confined to one narrow channel, but loiters as it
spreads out and shows a wider front. At first our
efforts and attention are bestowed on the simpler
and more fundamental requirements of the spiritual
life, but later on we find new tasks branching out
before us on the right hand and the left. We

cannot then expect to advance as rapidly in twenty
simultaneous undertakings as in one.
From all these considerations it seems to follow,
that the perseverance or constancy which we have
396 DISCOURAGEMENT.
to aim at is a certain constancy of the will, a
purpose of never giving up through discouragement,

but of going on with a sort of spider-like persistency,
patiently and promptly beginning again as often as
the silken thread we have spun is snapped by one
mishap or another. God will look less to the length
we have accomplished than to the length we have
designed to
accomplish painful,
;
nor will these
reiteratedbeginnings go unrewarded, unless faith
and hope and courage and clinging love are without
value in His eyes. C est qu en aucune chose,
"
il n est donne a 1 homme

"
peut etre," says Guizot,

d arriver au but; sa gloire est d y marcher." He "
that shall persevere to the end," whom the hour of

death shall find still struggling to gain the height,
albeit beginning at the base for the thousandth
time, he "shall be saved," and God in one purga
torial pang will perfect the unfinished task and
willbring the storm-tossed, weary soul "to the
haven of its desire."
THE MYSTICAL BODY.
"
For as the body

is one, and hath many members; and
all the members

of the body whereas they are many, yet are
one body, so also is Christ. And the eye cannot say to the
hand I need not thy help nor again the head to the feet
:
; :
I have no need of you."

i Cor. xii. 12, 21.
THE prominence given to the notion of the Church

is notoriously characteristic of Catholic and his
torical Christianity, and distinguishes it from those
many schools and Christian congregations which

are called Churches in a widely different sense,
and which professedly repudiate the Catholic s
conception of the Church as they do his conception
of priesthood and sacrifice, albeit retaining the
terms with a modified signification.
It is not possible to define one idea truly, that
is, to draw a line round it, without excluding false
definitions or to prove one position without

;
disproving the contradictory. Still our present

purpose not to plead a cause, as it were, in
is
the presence of inquirers or of opponents, but for

our own pleasure and contemplation to set out in
order our thoughts on so vast and complex a
theme to advance ourselves some
; little way
towards a better apprehension of the idea of "
"
the Church, an idea which no one mind can hope

398 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
to embrace in its entirety. We comprehend and

exhaust nothing that is not simply the creature
of our own brain abstractions, forms, figures,
generalizations but when we come to concrete
;
realities, to of God s hands, we know

the works
nothing, not the simple atomic creature, through
and through, but at most, from this corner and
from that now under one aspect, now under
;
another. If it is so of the dust of the earth, still

more is it so of man made indeed from the dust,
yet a world in himself were he but mere animal, a
fathomless universe since he is also spiritual, and
"little lower than the angels." Who then shall
weigh and measure and sum up in vain words the
of Him who is at once God and man, or the
" "
idea
idea of that mystic Body, human and divine, earthly
and heavenly, His Bride, the Catholic Church ?
Were she but a society of man s making, a mere
constitution and government imposed upon the
Christian people that "all
things might be done
decently and in order," then indeed man s mind
could quickly reach from end to end of its own
reation ; be nothing harder or more
there would
mysterious in the idea of the Church, than of any
other polity ecclesiastical or civil there would be ;
no room for growth or progress in our knowledge

of her nature. We
might expect our forefathers
who had framed that polity to have grasped the
conception, not only as clearly, but more clearly
than ourselves. But in the study of God s works
natural and supernatural, we never near the end ;
our knowledge ever puts forth new branches, which
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 399
in their turn branch out again, and these again, till

we are lost and bewildered at the mazes which
eternity alone will give us leisure to traverse. In
these matters, in the study of realities, we can grow
wiser than our elders, taught by the accumulated
wisdom and experience of ages, transmitted from
generation to generation.
Every Christian body or society, by the -very
fact that it is a body, admits the existence and
the need of a Church in some sense of the word ;
nor ever disputed that Christ Himself approved,

is it
counselled, and commanded the association of His

some sort of external society though
followers into ;
the nature and meaning of that command is

interpreted differently. The point in which the
Catholic interpretation differs so markedly from
all others, is the mediatorial character which it
ascribes to theChurch as an institution through

which, and through which alone, the soul can be
united to God. The good Catholic thinks and
speaks of the Church as his spiritual Mother from
whom his soul derives its supernatural life, by whom
it is fed, nourished, healed, chastened, corrected,
whom he is bound
to love, reverence, and obey.
Her name ever on his lips and in his heart.
is
We should think it strange to hear a Nonconformist

Holy Mother Church," for he has no
"
speaking of
thought which answers to the phrase, though he
too believes in a Church otherwise conceived. It
is precisely this exaltation of the Church to the
side of Christ, her identification with Christ, that
he quarrels with, the ascription to her of that
mediatorial office which is the prerogative of Him

alone, of whom it God and
is said : "There is one
one Mediator between God and man, the man
Christ Jesus."
But what is mediatorship ? For indeed it is
very doubtful if even those who vindicate it so

earnestly for our Blessed Lord as His exclusive
prerogative are altogether clear on the point.
Evidently it is some kind of "going between"
God and man, a drawing together of those who
were sundered and estranged. As God-Man, Christ
has the interests of God and of man at heart and ;
in Him creation and the Creator are linked in ,one
personality. He is thus by nature fitted as none

other for the office of go-between or mediator, and
for the effecting of that union or atonement which
is its end.
But it is just here when we try to deter
mine the nature of that union, and the mode
of its production, that two totally different con
ceptions of mediation present themselves; so that
while all Christians call Christ their mediator,
Catholics alone use the word in a sense which forbids
itsapplication to any other than to Him whereas ;
others, relying upon the text just quoted, refuse to

apply it to creatures in a sense in which it may
nevertheless be most rightly applied to them. For
indeed every creature that helps us in any way to
know or love or serve God better, is to be numbered
among the means of salvation, and so far mediates
between the soul and God. We do not see God
face to face yet, but must climb up to His throne
from His footstool, to Heaven from earth, by means

of the ladder of creation which
bridges the other
wise impassable gulf. Still more, our fellow-men
here on earth, in so far as they help us, instruct us,
train us, pray for us, and are in a thousand
ways
instrumental in our salvation, are truly mediators
between our souls and God, and not only occasion,
but to some extent effect, that union by a ministry-
of reconciliation. It is not then wonderful that
Catholics who believe that "the effectual fervent
prayer of a just man availeth much," should ascribe
a still greater efficacy to the
prayers of the saints in
Heaven, and speak of them as mediators and
" "
"intercessors."
But such mediation asthis is only a form of

ministry or service. The thing or person who
ministers or serves is thereby, or at least
therein,
subordinated to the person served. "Who is
greater, he that sitteth at meat or he that serveth ? "
Christ came into our midst as one that served, and

abased Himself at our feet in the abject
humility
of love ; and this manner of mediation he not only
allowed to all His disciples, but enjoined upon
them : have given you an example ... If I,
"
your Lord and Master, wash your feet, much more

ought ye to wash one another s feet." So far as
Christ came to enlighten us
by word and example,
to minister help to our souls
and bodies, to promote
effectively our union with God, He was truly a
mediator, and the first of mediators, but not the
sole mediator, not the sole means of our salva
tion.
AA
But besides this ministerial mediation, there is

another which for lack of a better term we might
call "magisterial;"
for in the exercise thereof the
mediator not abased, but exalted above him
is
in whose behalf he mediates; he does not simply

effect and produce direct union of the soul with God,
and then stand aside having finished his service of
mercy; but he is himself the link through which
the soul is bound to God, standing as it were
between the soul and God. He is not as a gardener
who grafts the branch into the stock, and thereby
gives it life, but He is Himself the stock into
which
the graft is set and through which it draws life
from mother earth, one and the same life quickening
I am the vine," says Christ, and you are "
"
both.
the branches."
When is the one and

Catholics say that Christ
only mediator between God and man, that through
Him alone we have access to the Father, that He
alone is the door of the sheepfold, that no man
cometh to the Father but by Him, they are speaking
of this "magisterial" mediation, often so dimly
understood outside the Church. They mean that
no mere creature however holy or exalted can
directly and immediately united to God so
be as
to be a sharer of the divine life and beatitude but ;
must first be united to Christ so as to make with

Him one thing, one body, one moral personality,
which one thing," is united to God and receives
"
His quickening grace. They mean to deny any

separate or independent union with God, apart
from Him who is the one channel of eternal life.
But where faith in the Divinity of Christ is

clouded, and the purport of the Incarnation ill
taught and ill apprehended, there is a danger of
altogether ignoring this "magisterial" mediation
of Christ, of regarding Him as merely the first of
prophets, teachers, philanthropists, martyrs by ;
reason of His Divinity, infinite in dignity, infinite

in power and wisdom, but still exercising only the
same sort of ministerial mediation as they, though
on a vastly"
But salvation through
extended scale.
Christ means
salvation by incorporation with
Christ, the sharing with Him of a gift of which
we are incapable in our isolation a gift which is ;
indivisible, toogreat for our single soul to grasp

or contain, except so far as, in union with Christ
and with hands locked in His, it is strengthened to
bear the burden.
No one
will quarrel with us perhaps for con
ceiving the Church as a mediator in the ministerial

sense of the term for whether she be of human or
;
Divine origin, she evidently, under God, one of

is
the principal means for the salvation of souls, in

that she carries on the ministry of Christ, dis
seminates His teaching, applies the fruits of His
Passion to the healing of the nations. When the
Nonconformist repudiates sacerdotalism, it is not
because it involves such mediation as this; for he
himself is tolerant of such intervention on the part
of his own ministers. Indeed he tolerates far more
than any Catholic would endure for he leaves it
;
to the mood and caprice of his pastor, to determine

on each occasion the substance of the public prayers.
4 o4 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
so that those present are willing to be represented

before God as sad or joyful, as penitential or
triumphant, as needing these graces rather than
others, all according to the passing phases of the
minister s own soul, and are ready to say Amen to
whatever may come into his head. Also they are
willing to listen patiently to his private interpreta
tion of the word of God, and to accept it unless it
manifestly disagrees with their own; they to
a
large extent trust him and allow their minds to be

formed by him in doctrinal and religious questions.
In a word, he is not merely their delegate before
God, but their representative his mediation is not ;
rote the words

passive, as his who repeats by
entrusted to him by another but rather active as ;
1
of one to whom we commit our will and judgment.
The Catholic priest, on the other hand, is but the
Church Every word that he utters at
s delegate.
the altar, nay, every little gesture and intonation
is prescribed for him by the Christian republic not
merely of to-day, but of the ages past and even ;
though the setting be his own, yet the doctrine that

he sets forth in the pulpit is not his own but that
1
Cf. the plea for "Common Prayer" quoted by Walton s
"
"
Piscator :
But he that unto others leads the way

In public prayer,
Should do it so
As all that hear may know
They need not fear
To tune their hearts unto his tongue and say,
Amen not doubt they were betrayed
;
To blaspheme when they meant to have prayed.

(Compleat Angler.)
of the Church who has sent him, whose mouthpiece

he is. Were he a reprobate or an unbeliever, he
might be
guilty of sacrilege in preaching and
praying, but not of insincerity or hypocrisy, since
he is understood to speak not in his own name but
in the Church s. The very vestments in which she
blots out his personality when he approaches the
altar, are an indication of her desire that in his
official work he should put
off himself and should
put on the Church. We

do not for a moment deny
that the individual will break through and assert
himself in spite of all precautions; that he, and
still more his followers and admirers, will often
put
the man before the priest. But wherever this
tendency prevails, whether in the popular preacher
or the popular confessor ;
in the ministry of the
word or in sacraments
that of the whether by ;
the intrusion of merely personal views and opinions

into priestly teaching and direction, or by the sub
stitution of personal tastes and fancies in place of
the established liturgical observances of the Church,
it is always felt to be uncatholic, an alien element
hostile to that liberty from individual tyranny which
the Church secures for her children.
It is not then the notion of instrumental or
ministerial mediatorship which the Nonconformist
objects to associating with his conception of the
Church; but rather that of a mediatorship such as
we have already declared to be the exclusive pre
rogative of Christ. Exclusive," because for the
"
Catholic, Christ and the Church are not two, but

one, as head and body are one, as husband and
4o6 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
wife are one, two in one flesh. The vine is not all
stem, nor
all branches, but stem and branches
together and ;
the Church is not all Head, nor all
members, but the two together are one Christ and
one Church, one mediator between God and man ;
complement, the extension

for she is the fulness, the
of Christ, as the branches are the extension of the
vine.
Thus all that we said of Christ s magisterial
mediation be understood of Christ in His
is to
fulness, Christ and His Church through the Church
;
alone we have access to the Father no man comes ;
to the Father but through her. She is the imme

diate, the only adequate recipient of that grace
which flows into each single soul that is united to
her ; she, too,the recipient of that Eternal Life
is
hereafter, single souls share only

which because
they are built into her fabric. We
are not united to
God singly and independently as rays which converge
to a common centre and yet do not touch one
another on the road, but we are first knit together
into one living organic body under the Man Christ
as our Head, and then with Him and through Him
united to the very Godhead, whose life and beati
tude flows down to the least and furthest member
of that living thing.
The happiness which the Christian looks forward
to hereafter is not that of his own personal triumph
over evil, of his own satisfaction in the realization
of his highest and best capacities but it is that ;
of the triumph of God s cause for which he has,

lived and laboured, recognizing himself as but an
instrument directed by reason and conscience to

ends greater than personal, and but dimly conceived
by himself; it is, by consequence, the happiness
of the triumph of all those who with himself are
sharers in the victory wrought by the right hand of
God. The very terminology which speaks of the
"Church militant" and the "Church
triumphant"
tells us of a collective and corporate joy. He is no
true knight who fights but for his own skin, who
triumphs only because he leaves the conflict scath-
less and rich with his own share of the booty but ;
rather he, whose solitary joy is all swallowed up and

forgotten in the common joy of his prince and his
country and his fellow-knights. For as the soul
is not received and possessed by any one part or
member of the organism but only by the whole ;
so that to which God gives Himself and unites

Himself in glory, is no one soul, but all souls
clustered round Christ into one living body. Nor
is it a common beatitude, a "common treasure,
" " "
in the sense that all enjoy the same, albeit inde

pendently, as they do who
gather round the same
fire, each feeling its warmth neither more nor less
for that many or few
it feel
together but it is ;
"common" because a rejoicing in the joy of

it is
others, and is therefore greater as there are more

to participate in it.
For such a happiness and salvation as this,

incorporation is plainly an absolute necessity ;
outside the Church or outside Christ there is no
"
becomes a truism as soon as we under

salvation,"
stand the nature of the salvation in question.

4 o8 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
It must be admitted that this mediatorial con

ception of the Church, this notion of corporate
sanctificationand salvation is not only subtle and
strange to modern minds of the prevalent type,
but also manifestly uncongenial to some of the
governing ideas which gave birth to Protestantism
in the sixteenth century, ideas which had from
the very first been lurking here and there in the
pages of many a saintly mystic and illuminist more
happy in the enjoyment of Divine union than in
his analysis and exposition of that state and its
conditions.
"
I and my God,"
"
My Beloved is mine
and I am His "
spontaneous self-
these, as the
utterances of contemplative love, cannot be mis
understood but curious speculation may give them
;
an "excluding" sense savouring of a certain pride

and independence, of an indifference, nay, even a
sort of contempt for others, whom nevertheless God
has identified with Himself, and apart from whom
He cannot and will not be approached. To go to
God alone, to deal with Him immediately, to be
taught by Him privately and directly, to link our
selves with no other when we draw near to Him,
to stand or by ourselves, to account our fellow-
fall
Christians in this matter as simply among those

creatures which are subordinated to us as helps and
ministers, but in no wise as making one body with
us ;to view them as co-operators for a gain
"common" in a sense, but of which each takes
his share, nor gains in the gain of another, this is
the leading notion of what we might call a false
individualism in religion.
False as a fact, not because the idea is intrin
sically absurd in any way. God most certainly

might have created each soul to be a sepa
rate little world, a church in itself, to be taught
and sanctified and saved independently, and not
merely as part of a body and there is much prima
;
facie evidence to favour such a supposition. Even

the Catholic religion teaches that each soul is the
Church in epitome; that the first and absolutely
indispensable care of each man must be for his own
sanctification, which he may not sacrifice or injure,
however slightly, were it for the salvation of the
whole race. Nor is the Protestant conception
essentially selfish and egoistic, however inadequate
and defective. For it regards all souls as destined
to be united hereafter in God as rays are united in
their common centre, while here on earth they are
bound together by the ties of friendship and equality
as those engaged in the same profession or
pursuit,
whose interest and pleasure it is to help one another;
or as fellow-travellers on the road making for the
same country, where, however, each has his own
home and private interest, which will not suffer
were all his
companions to drop by the way. Yet
the Church, in contrast to the Catholic view, is
conceived simply as the aggregation of souls, as a
multitude of units in no way organized or inter
dependent, nor is a love of the common good to
which each member ministers best by its own
perfection, the motive which makes self-care and self-
culture a supreme duty, but rather an
implicit con
viction that it is only the
surplus and overflow of
4 io THE MYSTICAL BODY.
our rational self-love that is due to our neighbour,

since each man regarded as a world and a church
is
in himself, not in an analogical and defective sense,

but in the fullest and most literal. It is the unit,
and not, as with Catholics, the body, which is the
archetype and exemplar.
When we say that our salvation not merely
depends upon, but even consists formally in our
incorporation into the Church, it is plain that we
are speaking primarily of the invisible Church, and
only in a conditional and qualified manner of the
visible Church, which is but the sacrament and out
ward instrument of the former a distinction which
willoccupy us later on. Speaking roughly, we might
say that the Catholic idea of the Church is social in
the good sense, while the Protestant is individualist
in the bad sense. In the truest sense these notions
are in no way antagonistic, for the ideal society is
an organism whose every member works most fruit
fully for the common good by securing its own
fullest development ;
where there is no conflict
between public and private interest; where mutual
help and co-operation begets the only true liberty,
which consists not in sterile isolation, but in the
abundance of the means and opportunities for self-
realization and the turning to account of every
talent and energy where the initiative and move
;
ment is from below, from the healthy vitality of the

members themselves, needing but to be directed and
guided by the head. It is no artificial product
planned by theorists and imposed by force or fraud
on a free people in the name of liberty, aiming at an
impossible equality by reducing all to the condition

of slavery, but the spontaneous growth of healthy
social life freed from all morbid conditions.
Doubtless this ideal is at best a term of approxi
mation never to be fully realized except in the
Church triumphant but it is ever preached, and to
;
some degree realized, in the visible and militant

Church, whose constitution is, as St. Paul teaches,
that of a living body, not that of social contract.
The very idea of the Church is a protest against
the false individualism of the Reformation on the
one hand, and against the false socialism of its
reaction on the other. It is interesting to note how
the following piece of otherwise very admirable

criticism is vitiated by a failure to recognize the
fact that if a certain individualism is un-catholic, a
crude collectivism is no less so.
Palestrina writes H. E. Krehbiel,
"
s
music,"
"
must not be listened to with the notion in mind of

dramatic expression such as we almost instinctively
feel to-day. Palestrina does not seek to proclaim
the varying sentiment which underlies his texts.
That leads to individual interpretation, and is
foreign to the habits of Churchmen in the old con
ception, when the individual was completely resolved
in the organization. He aimed to exalt the mystery
of the service, not to bring it down to popular
comprehension and make it a personal utterance.
For such a design in music we must wait till after
the Reformation, when the ancient mysticism began
to fall back before the demands of reason, when the
idea of the sole and sufficient mediation of the
4 i2 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
Church lost some of its power in the face of

the growing conviction of the intimate personal
relationship between man and his Creator. Now
idealism had to yield some of its dominion to
realism,and a more rugged art grew up in place of
that which had been so wonderfully sublimated by
mysticism.
"
It is in Bach, who came in a century after

Palestrina, that we find the most eloquent musical
proclamation of the new regime . . .
"
Palestrina s art is Roman

the spirit of rest- ;
fulness, of celestial calm, of supernatural revelation

and supernal beauty broods over it. Bach s is
Gothic rugged, massive, upward-striving, human.
In Palestrina s music, the voice that speaks is the
voice of angels in Bach s, it is the voice of men.
;
"
Bach
the publisher of the truest, tenderest,
is
deepest, and most individual religious feeling. His

music is peculiarly a hymning of the religious
sentiment of modern Germany, where salvation is
to be wrought out with fear and trembling by each

individual through faith and works, rather than
the agency of even a divinely-constituted Church.
... As the Church fell into the background, and
the individual came to the fore, religious music took
on the dramatic character which we find in the
Passion music of Bach."
The critic is acute enough to feel that the idea of
Catholicism and that of Protestantism are in some
sense mutually exclusive that the opposition can be;
roughly described to be such as exists between

socialism and individualism ; also, that this difference
and opposition permeates everywhere, not only

through doctrine, discipline, ecclesiastical con and
stitution, but even through liturgy, music, painting,
and literature. But he is wrong in assuming that
because the Reformation cast aside the social and
corporate element of the Catholic conception of
the Church, retaining only the individualist element
by which it was balanced, and which it balanced in
return, therefore the individual was, so to say, dis
covered by Protestantism, having been in the old
"
"
"
conception completely resolved in the organi

zation." The Church never for a moment in any
way accepted Plato s notion of the State (civil or
ecclesiastic,matters not) as of a distinct personality
or entity for whose sake the component members
existed collectively and individually. Nay, it was the
Catholic idea which gave slow and difficult birth to
belief in the absolute and ineffaceable value of the
individual, a belief fed and fostered by the appli
cation of the several sacraments to each several
soul, by the extinction of all artificial inequality,
and the recognition of perfect spiritual equality
among all those, from the Emperor to the lazer,
who feed at God s common board on the Bread of
Angels. It is a curious comment also on the
observation that Protestantism put man for the first
time into "
intimate personal relationship with his

Creator," that while Protestants mostly speak of "the
Saviour," and
"
the Lord," Catholics invariably say,

our Saviour," and
"
our Lord," and surely a glance

"
at the devotions and prayers of Catholics in any

age or country will show at once how absolutely
4 i4 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
unfounded is the notion that the Church s mediation

hinders immediate commerce between God and the
individual.
Not such indeed is the mediation of the Church ,*
she is not a barrier or a blind between the soul and

her Maker. For though the quickening spirit can
touch the parts and members only on condition of
their incorporation with the body, separate from
which they are dead yet the body does not stand
;
between them and the spirit, as though it absorbed

without transmitting the vital flame. And so it is
only through the Church, as making part of the
Church, that the soul can come into direct contact
with God our Father it is only through the Mystic
;
Vine that the sap of sanctifying grace can flow into

our souls. Again, need we say, we speak of the
invisible Church, the Communion of Saints, in which
none is incorporated save by living faith since no ;
one can be so ignorant as to suppose that mere

outward communion with the visible Church is
sufficient for salvation, however necessary it may
be in certain cases.
In fine, we may maintain fearlessly that Gothic
architecture is every bit as Catholic as Roman, and
Bach s style of music as Palestrina s. Both schools
embody and one aspect of the Catholic
set forth
conception, each being complementary of the other.

The exigencies and tastes of particular localities
and times may call for an emphasis, now on this
aspect, now on the other. Obviously the public and
collective worship of the Church of its own nature
demands the repression of individualism in liturgical
THE MYSTICAL BODY.
observance, music, and other vehicles of expression.

There is an impertinence which we instinctively
resent in any attempt on the part of the individual
to obtrude his private interpretations, sentiments,
and emotions upon us by unauthorized vagaries and
emphases of his own. He is but the mouthpiece of
the Universal Church and of the traditions of
centuries let him deliver the message entrusted to
;
him without comments or embellishments of his

own. Originality is well in other spheres, but in
the choir or the sanctuary it is the worst form of
vulgarity.
To conclude the present matter, it is in this
conception of the Church as mediating between
God and the soul, as a mystical body in union with
which alone salvation is possible, as the mother in
whose womb we
are conceived, on whose breasts
we hang, that we find the reason of the prominence
given to the Church in the mind and on the lips of
Catholic Christians. Much even as we venerate
Mary, the great Mother of God and man, yet even
she is but a type and figure, but a part and member
of this still greater Mother of us all the Jerusalem
from on high, our Holy Mother the Church.
n.
"
The Church of the first-born who are written in the

Heavens." Hebrews xii. 23.
When we assert that salvation may be said in

some sense to consist in being incorporated with
the Church, we are not speaking of the visible, but
of the invisible Church. With the former we are

incorporated by mere profession of faith and obe
dience, although we be spiritually dead with the ;
latterwe are incorporated only by divine charity.

Let us now consider more closely this distinction
between the invisible and the visible Church, and
determine more accurately the relation of these two
societies one to another.
We uncommonly speak of them as the
not
and the
"Body" of the Church, implying
"Soul"
at least some kind of resemblance between their

mutual relation and that of the components of our
double nature. Of these components the soul is
invisible, immortal, incorruptible, self-sustaining,

principal ;
the body is visible, transitory, corruptible,
dependent ;
it is the instrument and minister of the
soul, its symbol and sacrament. For this reason
we may apply the word "body"
to the visible
Church on earth, which shall end with time, which
retains corrupt members in its communion, as tares
amid the wheat which is the outward symbol and
;
sacrament of the invisible Church whose organ

and instrument it is. And by contrast, this in
visible Church of saints and angels may be called
the "
soul." But every metaphor is imperfect.

Soul and body are at once distinct and in a sense
co-extensive ; whereas the invisible and visible
Church are neither, some members being common
to both, others belonging only to one. The saints
in Heaven and legions of just men on earth do not
belong to the visible Church or come under its

external jurisdiction ; while thousands of those that
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 4I?
do have neither part nor lot with the saints in

light.
Again, speaking strictly, each of these societies
has (like every society) a soul and
body of its own.
The saints in Heaven and all the
just on earth,
Catholic or non-Catholic, Christian or
non-Christian,
are invisibly bound together
by the indwelling of
the same Holy Spirit of
Charity "which is the bond
of peace," the cement which seals into one the
stones of the Heavenly Salem one
"
and body
one spirit." And on earth the members of the
visibleChurch are visibly united by the bond of
obedience to that same Spirit viewed as the source
of ecclesiastical authority and sacramental
grace
one body and one spirit."
"
However convenient, therefore, it may be to

speak of the invisible and visible Churches as the
soul and body of the Church, it is not without
danger of confusion.
What,
then, is the invisible Church ?
that communion or
It is
society of saints and
angels in Heaven and of just men on earth, of all
nations and of all ages, of which St. Paul
says :
But you have come nigh to Mount Sion and to

"
the city of the living God, the

Heavenly Jerusalem,
and to the of
many thousands of angels,
company
and to the Church of the first-born who are written
in the heavens, and to God the
Judge of all, and
to the spirits of the just made
perfect, and to Jesus
the Mediator."
While, therefore, the members of the visible

Church are upon earth, those of the invisible are
both in Heaven and on earth on earth, a handful ;
BB
41 8 THE MYSTICAL BODY.
in Heaven, as the sands on the sea-shore.
That portion which is in Heaven is formed and

into its changeless condition ;
perfected has passed
while the portion on earth is in process of formation,
not yet accepted, shaped, or perfected. Here the
stones of Solomon s temple are hewn and fashioned
with a rough blow and sharp incision there
many ;
and
they are noiselessly laid each
in its peculiar
in the living structure.
predestined place
Scalpri salubris ictibus
Et tunsione plurima,
Fabri polita malleo,
Hanc saxa molem construunt,
Aptisque juncta nexibus
1
Locantur in fastigio.
Wemust not imagine that the visible Church

is the same as the Church militant, and the
in
visible the same as the Church triumphant. For

all upon earth who are engaged in God s cause
inside or
belong to the militant Church, be they
outside the visible Church, while the triumphant
Church comprehends only that portion of the
invisible Church which is in Heaven.
In Heaven the invisible Church consists of the
spirits of the just
made perfect in love, purged
seven-fold in the fire of suffering and great tribula
tion, developed into full correspondence with that
kindly chisel deftly formed,
1
By
With showers of battering blows bsstormed,
Squared by the hand which Heaven

hath skilled
These polished blocks the fabric build
And fastly jointed there unite
To crown the rising summit s height.
Divine plan and pattern thought out and loved by

God from all eternity, and then by Him infused
slowly and laboriously into the often reluctant mind

and conscience, into the heart and affections of each
saint a light that haunted the soul when it would
;
cower in the darkness a fire that leaped up after

;
every futile quenching; a tormenting thought that

would not rest unlistened-to and unloved. And
though there dwells in the saints but one and the
same spirit, yet there is an infinite and most orderly
diversity of gifts and manifestations, even as the
same vital spark displays itself diversely in the
multitudinous members of our body as sight in
the eye, as hearing in the ear, as motion in the
limbs, as thought in the mind, as love in the heart,
yet one and the same spirit." In the gathering
"
together of the saints we have not merely an endless

chain of repetitions of the same idea or type as it
were so many beads threaded on a string, or a
bundle of innumerable fagots each the exact counter
part of its fellows but rather a mighty and complex
;
organism, a vast mosaic of souls of every conceivable

pattern and complexion of sanctity, no two indeed
alike, albeiteach indispensable for the perfection
of the entire design, each with its own place that
no other can fill, each with its own song of praise
that no other can sing, and yet which blends in a
chord of universal praise that would be thinned
and impoverished by its silence. As all creation
collectively makes one full utterance of the Divine
Goodness of which each several creature is but a
word or syllable, so in the communion of saints
4 2o THE MYSTICAL BODY.
the full idea of sanctity, the flower of human excel

lence wedded with Divine, is unfolded and expanded
in all its parts to the glory and praise of God, and
fragrance in odorem suavitatis. There
gives forth its
first shall we understand what God meant when He

created man ;
not this man nor that, but man ;
there shall we see that governing idea which was

all the
forcing itself into reality and fact, through
long, weary centuries of our miserable history ;
and
seeing it we shall cry out Justus es, Domine, et :
rectum judicium tuum God was right after all.

There at last Christ shall be unfolded and
made plain in that mystical body which is well
called His pleroma, His fulness or extension. His
Sacred Humanity while on earth, with its brief span
of thirty years, could not within the narrow limits
of a single experience reveal to us more than a
fraction of the latent potentialities of His deified
soul. He was but as the seed whose power and
meaning lies hid till it has germinated, flowered,
and multiplied from generation to genera
fructified,
tion. From Him all sanctity flows as from its
source, whether we trace the stream from Calvary
backward to the beginning or forward to the end
of time. "I
live," says the Christian, "yet
not I,
but Christ liveth in me," for sanctity

is simply the
prevalence in us of a power that

"
makes for right
eousness," of a will that is not our own in us, but

not of us ever pressing against the will of our
of a
egoism and self-centred love in the interests
love which is God-centred and unselfish. It is the
constant action upon us of God, who is, moreover,

an Incarnate God ;
it is to our soul what gravitation
isto our body, a force ever drawing us to our true
centre and rest ; so ever-abiding and persistent that
we have come to confound it with the very constitu
tion of ourspiritual being. Yet were the earth
suddenly annihilated from under our feet we should
have no sense of weight and were God to with ;
draw from us we should have no wish to do good,

no love of the truth, no sense of right or wrong.
The tree is known by its fruits, and Christ is
known by His deeds not merely by the deeds of His
;
earthly life, but by all that He has done and shall do

in His saints from the beginning to the end. His
spirit, in order to display its full content and signifi
cance, needs to be applied to every condition of
human life, so that we may see Christ under every
aspect in every nationality and language, in every
;
stage of development, social and individual, in Jew

and Greek, in Barbarian and Scythian, in bond and
free, in wealth and poverty, in prosperity and adver
sity, in health and sickness, in youth and age,

in simplicity and culture, in weakness and strength ;
that we may see the leaven of the Kingdom of God

in all its workings, in its actions and reactions under
every possible variety of conditions, favourable and
unfavourable, and may enter more fully into the
mind and heart of Him whose life is thus manifested
in His mystical body. I saw a great multitude,"
"
says St. John, "which no man could number, of all

nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing
before the throne and in the sight of the Lamb ;
"
for so it shall be in that day when the number of

the elect shall be filled up, and the last stone of the
mystical temple shall be laid in its predestined place,,
and the last piece set to the perfect mosaic when ;
the body of Christ shall have reached its fulness,,

and the idea of Christian sanctity shall have attained
itscomplete expansion and the potentialities of the
;
human soul shall have been revealed to the utmost ;
when the long-sought chord of created and uncreated

praise shall have been struck at last, and time and
the things of time shall be needed no more.
in.
In every nation he that feareth

"
Him and worketh justice,

is acceptable to Him." Acts x. 35.
We have now to ask ourselves : Who are the

members on earth of the Invisible Church ? And
the first answer is
simple enough, namely : All those
in whose hearts charity is diffused by the Holy
Ghost all those who give God and God s cause the
;
first, if not always the only place in their affections ;
all those who prefer right and truth and duty to

father, mother, spouse, children, brethren, kinsfolk,
home, and lands all those who accept not only
;
with their mind, but with their heart and will, that
it profits a man nothing if he gain the whole world
to the hurt of his own soul. They may not yet have
learnt to love nothing else but in connection with
God and sympathy with the Divine mind and
in
will ; they have undoubtedly yet to be tried and
perfected through many tribulations, either here or
in Purgatory for nothing defiled has ever entered
Heaven or reached the beatifying stage of love but

at the cost of purifying pain. Still, as long as God
weighs down all other treasures heaped together in

the balance of their affections, so long do they keep
their vital connection with the Mystical Body un-
severed ;
but when singly or collectively creatures
are preferred to Him in that same act they become
as severed limbs ;
for nothing corrupt can enter into
or remain in the Kingdom of Heaven.
But "
without faith is impossible to please

it
God," it is impossible to possess charity, to cling to

truth and goodness above all things and at every
sacrifice. We cannot therefore suppose that the

invisible Church on earth extends beyond the limits
of the visible except so far as faith so extends. Faith
is commonly and rightly explained to be a firm will
or resolution to hold fast to truths taught us by God

without discussing them or questioning them by any
kind of practical doubt. We hold to them with that
firmness which God s word merits and we do so in ;
obedience to God s command ;

not because we have
necessarily sat in judgment either on the truths
revealed or on God s claims as a witness but ;
simply because we recognize God s right to command

the mind which He has made. Without such faith
we cannot please God ; for even where reason
reaches the simple truths of religion and morality,
itsgrasp is too feeble and its gaze too unsteady to
prevent our mind being perverted in the hour of
temptation and yielding to the fallacies of self-love,
pride, and sensuality, or listening to the voice of

worldly and carnal wisdom, or ceding to the
influence of universal example. In that hour we

have no strength alone soli : we must lean
; F<^
upon God and hear His voice and not our own;
loyal obedience to Him will stand us in good stead
when we are perhaps blinded by passion to our
truest and highest self-interest. As hope lends us
God s strength in the hour of weakness, so faith
lends us God s light in the hour of darkness when
our own lamp has gone out or flickers to extinction.
reason that theologians insist on some
It is for this
kind of divine speaking or revelation as a condition

for faith, thus strictly
interpreting, Fides ex auditu
Faith comes by hearing." For faith is essentially
"
trust in another whose wisdom and knowledge

supple
ments what is defective in our own. However clearly
we may learn the same religious truths from reflection
upon the phenomena of conscience or of physical
we are so far resting only upon ourselves,
nature, yet
and our own reason and observation a support that
will prove insufficient in the time of trouble. We
are trusting to the arm of flesh, and not to the arm
of God flesh and blood has revealed it to us, but
;
not our Father who is in Heaven. Faith, hope,

and love alike put God for self, and bind us to Him,
and deliver us from the weakness of isolation.
There is nothing arbitrary in making faith a
condition for salvation or at least of supernatural
salvation. It is altogether natural and even
necessary. Every wise moralist knows that we
cannot lead a good life unless we resolve to stand
firm in the hour of temptation and darkness, by
those truths which we saw clearly in the hour of
calm and light, but which now we do not see

clearly and are disposed to question in other ;
words, unless we are resolved not to rationalize

or doubt, but to hold on blindly to what we do not
now see, substituting a will-certainty for a mind-
certainty. This is faith, not in another, but in our
own better self; yet in principle it is the same. If
indeed we yield to the pressure of temptation and
reopen the question, we only offend against our own
better judgment a fallible authority at best, though
surely more trustworthy than the judgment of passion.
In proportion as the spiritual truths by which we
must live are subtle and mysterious, we need still
greater support to supplement our wavering reason,
while for those that are strictly supernatural and out
of reason s ken, God s support is an absolute
necessity. Here, to doubt is to offend not against

fallible authority, but against the authority of God,
and the will-certainty must be measured to that
standard it must
; be an unqualified adhesion of
the whole soul to God s word as such.
There can be no faith therefore where God is
not felt to have spoken and to have commanded
our obedient assent to the things that belong to
our peace, to the great fundamental truths that
there is a God, whose we are, and before whom
we continually stand who is the Rewarder and the
;
Reward of them that seek Him, to whom we must

render an account and pay the last farthing of our
debt of reverence and service. There can be no
faith, no pleasing of God, where the
idle speculative
questioning of these truths, implicitly admitted in

every act conscience, is not recognized as

of
immoral, as sinful, as a trespass not only against
conscience itself, but against the revealed will of
God or where, with the full consciousness of being
;
biassed
unduly excited or depressed, or otherwise
and unbalanced, one makes a resolve or chooses an
opinion in accordance with such bias.
Yet if the soul is to listen not to itself but to
God, if it is to cling to His word when its own
word falters, it is needful that God should really
speak to the soul, and should be apprehended

distinctly as so speaking. For speech, in this
stricter sense, it is not enough that the speaker
words or or even
betray his mind in signs, by
thought-transference" with
direct
"
the secret design
that the perceiver shall take his meaning, as when
one leaves a book open for another to read without
of a
bidding him read it, or showing any sign
will that he should do so. To speak is not only
to express one s rnind, but also to express one s will
that the hearer should listen. God utters His mind
in creation and in our conscience, and designs these
books for our instruction but only so far as He ;
also signifies that this message is expressly directed

to us can He be said to speak to us He rather ;
soliloquizes in our presence ;

He speaks in us, or
outside us, but not to us.
And what sort of sign is it that changes the

voice of reason and of nature into a supernatural
revelation and by which God enters into personal
;
relation with the soul and becomes her friend, her

teacher, her support ?
Were need of a very precise sum of

I in dire
money, and were on the same day to find more or

I
less the required amount, I should have no solid

reason to think that it had been left in my way by
design but were I to find the exact sum to the
;
very farthing, I could hardly resist the inference

that it was intended for me by some one who knew
my need, or if none knew it, by God who is over all..
The exact correspondence of the sum to my need
would change a "
find
"
into a gift it ; would equiva-

lently address the money to me and mark it with
my name.
It is peculiar to God, whose own the soul is, to
call her by her most secret name known to Him
alone. This was the reason of Christ s spell over
Nathaniel, over the woman of Samaria, over all
whom He has called. "Whence knowest thou Me?"
they say, or,

"
Sir, I perceive Thou art a prophet."

And so it is that God brings a truth home to
a man, and changes it from a dead to a living
word, when by its
preternatural opportuneness, its
altogether providential and otherwise unaccount
able correspondence to his complex spiritual
needs, it proves itself to be a message from One
who knows him through and through, in all his
individuality.
This waking up to the recognition of God s voice
whether in conscience or in nature, or in the inspired
word, this sense of its being directed to ourselves is
well exemplified in what we so often read in saints
lives, where some text lighted on by chance, some
naturally derived thought or suggestion presents
itself irresistibly as a Divine message and is listened

to as such. Who does not remember St. Augustine s
Tolle the words of a child at play or how
et lege, ;
St. Anthony, as the Breviary says, took as said to

himself (tamquam ea sibi dicta essent), the words heard
on entering a church Go sell all and follow Me."
:
"
And besides innumerable instances in hagiography

there is perhaps no religious-minded person who
has not had some such experience real or fancied.
And if those who habitually seek such signs, forcing
God s hand, as it were, and not waiting for the time
of His free visitation, will be often deluded and if ;
even those who do not seek them may often doubt

as to what is coincidence and what is design, yet
there are many instances where there is no room
for prudent or justifiable doubt.
However simple, frequent, and universal these
Divine utterances may be, in obedience to which
the soul which hears from the Father," learns and
"
comes to Christ, yet they can be no more claimed

as a strict exigency of our nature, than any other
preternatural and personal intervention of Provi
the
"
dence ; they, and the faith they generate, are
gift of God."
It not hard to believe that the fundamental

is
religious truths touching God the Rewarder

which
are written in the secret of conscience and over
the face of Nature are brought home, not once in
a lifetime, but over and over again to every soul,
as a Divine message from without, claiming an
obedient voluntary assent, a will-certainty stronger
than death. God speaks in divers manners but to ;
all who are to be judged as to faith, speak He must

in some form or other.
"
No says Aquinas,
difficulty,"follows from
"
the position that one brought up in the woods among

the wild beasts should be bound to certain explicit
beliefs ; for it is incumbent on Divine Providence
to provide each soul with all necessary conditions
for salvation, unless some hindrance is offered on
the soul s part. For were one so brought up, to
follow the lead of natural reason in the pursuit of
good and the avoidance of evil, it is to be held for
a perfect certainty (certissimum tenendum est), that
God would either reveal all necessary beliefs to him
by an internal inspiration, or He would send some

one to preach the faith to him, as He sent Peter
1
to Cornelius."
In other words, where the fuller revelation is

denied, where the light of the Gospel never
penetrates, yet the internal revelation of the funda
mental and germinal truths of all religion will surely
never be wanting one need not ascend into Heaven
;
to bring it down, nor descend into Hell to bring it
up, for the word is ever nigh to each human heart,

ever whispering into the soul s ear, ever knocking
at the gate of its love.
Wheresoever then and whensoever there is found
a man who listens obediently and humbly to the voice
of conscience ; who bows to its sovereign authority as
to a power above him and distinct from him, who
admits its unqualified claims, not only in theory but
in practice, there we may be sure that God, however
1
De Veritatt, xiv. a. ii. ad i.
43 o THE MYSTICAL BODY.
dimly recognized, has spoken and has been listened

to since without faith it is impossible to please
;
God, impossible to live that life of sacrifice and

conflict which obedience to conscience entails.
This surely is the meaning of Peter s vision of all
manner of living creatures brought together in one
vessel knit at the four corners ;
a figure of all
nations, of all sorts and conditions of men, from the

four winds of heaven, and from the dawn of our
race till its consummation, all cleansed by God
through the Blood of Christ, all subjected to Peter
as the Vicar of Christ even as was Cornelius whose
;
prayers and alms, ascending for a memorial in the

sight of God, were emblematic of the sacrifice of
justice offered daily by that large portion of the
invisible Church on earth, which stretches north,
south, east, and west, beyond the limits of the

visible.
"
In very deed," says Peter, interpreting

the vision, perceive that God is not a respecter
"
of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth

Him and worketh justice, is accepted of Him."
IV.
"The House of God, which is the Church of the living

God, the and ground of the truth." i Timothy iii. 15.
pillar
But if all this, which is matter rather of opinion

than of authoritative teaching, be admissible, it may
seem that we are letting in the heresy of moral and
dogmatic indifferentism, unless we also hold fast to
the truth that no one who professes indifferentism
is in good faith. A man who avowedly does not
care whether what he does is right or wrong so long

as he believes it right, who professes not to care
about breaking God
law so long as he does so
s
unintentionally, is plainly an immoral man, and has

no sympathy with justice for justice sake, no wish
to be like-minded with God. Similarly he who
protests that it is indifferent what a man thinks or
believes so long as he believes it sincerely, is an
untruthful man, altogether insincere in his very
profession of
sincerity. preposterous to
It is
maintain that because conscious wrong-doing and

error is a worse evil, therefore that which is uncon
scious is no evil. Good faith requires us to love
truth and right not only where we recognize it, but
everywhere and universally and that we should
;
give no sleep to our eyes till we have found out

what is true and right. None, therefore, can be
counted a member of the invisible Church who
through anyfault or negligence of his own remains
communion of the visible Church.
outside the
What, then, do we understand by the visible
Church ? It is the visible union of the faithful,
under one visible head or government ; understand
ing by the faithful those who with
their lips and
outward conduct subject themselves to the teaching
and laws of the Church, in short, those who would
be numbered in a census of Catholics. It is as
definite an institution as the Roman or the British
Empire, notorious in the history of the world for

the last two thousand years. What need to define
that which we have only to point to ?
Here, too, we have an articulated organized
body, calling itself the mystical body of Christ,
claiming in some measure His mediatorial office,

making incorporation with itself a condition of
salvation, and yet from the invisible Church
differing
in that it is wholly on earth, and nowise in Heaven ;
that its perpetuity is to the end of time but not to
all eternity; that it numbers sinners as well as
saints among its members, as a net containing good
fish and worthless, or a field of wheat and tares ;
that passes like a wave along the river of time,
it
continually renewing its matter, while preserving its

form, as succeeding generations creep up noiselessly
and pass by.
Are these, then, two Churches, two mystical
Bodies, two spouses of Christ, or are they one ?
We have already seen to what extent they can
be said to be related as soul and body, and where
that metaphor falls short. For while neither soul
nor body alone is a complete nature, each of these
Churches a complete society with a distinct con

is
stitution and bond of union. Yet this distinctness

does not prevent one being wholly dependent upon
and subordinate to the other, just as particular
departments of a complex government are subjected
to it, though distinctly organized or as a religious
;
order which exists only to serve the Church is, as a

society, quite distinct from it. Though not pre
cisely related as soul and body, yet we may say that
the invisible and visible Church are two parts of
one nature that they are like the inner word of
;
the mind and the outer word of the lips, distinct

yet most intimately connected as symbol and reality,
as sacrament and grace signified ;

that the visible
Church is vicarious and the invisible is principal ;
that the one the instrument of the other, as the

is
hand is the instrument of the body, or even as the

body the instrument, the symbol, the sacrament,
is
the expression of the soul.

The Church is the extension and body of Christ
her Head, who is both God and Man, two natures
in one person, the human being the organ and finite
manifestation and sacrament of the Divine, effecting
what it signifies, making us, by its touch,
partakers
of His Divinity, who vouchsafed to become a sharer
of our humanity. And so the invisible Church is
the extension of His Divinity, as the visible Church
isof His sacred humanity, both being united in the
personal unity of their head, and being related to
one another as the two natures are in Him the ;
human being entirely organic and subordinate to

the service and manifestation and communication of
the divine.
The Church is pre-eminently a great
visible
sacrament and type, whose organization, whose
indissoluble unity, whose perpetuity signifies dimly
that of the Heavenly Church and archetype even ;
as the semblance of the Eucharistic bread signifies

the Body of Christ. Moreover, incorporation and
membership with the visible Church not only
symbolizes but in due conditions effects that incor
poration with the invisible, in which our salvation
consists. Not, however, unconditionally or exclu
sively ; for what is true of all particular sacraments
holds here in like manner. God indeed has not tied
cc
His grace to the sacraments, and as there is a

baptism and communion of desire for those who for
one reason or another are inculpably cut off from
the rites of the Church, so there is a membership of
desire through which (though not without which)
the graces of actual membership can be secured.
Again, the sacraments may be not merely fruitless,
but spiritually destructive to those who use them
profanely and similarly outward membership with
;
the Church may be to many a cause of more

grievous condemnation than that of Tyre and Sidon,
or of Sodom and Gomorrah.
As of old, before Christ s advent, God worked in
the souls of men unsacramentally, yet not without
dependence on, and reference to, the coming
Mediator and the sacraments, so now more freely
does He lavish His saving grace broadcast wherever
the Church is locally or intellectually inaccessible,
though not without reference to the Church from
whose treasury and for whose sake, as it were, every
grace is conferred. Not indeed that all rudimentary
faith is destined or intended by God to reach on
earth its last development in the full light of Catholic
belief; but that it is its own nature

a seed, of
tending to that development when duly environed ;
it is the true religion in germ.

Since God has wedded into the human family
and has become one of ourselves, the whole race,
whether touched by the waters of baptism or left
in the darkness of nature, has been raised to a
supernatural dignity and favour quite independent

of the internal dignity of sanctifying grace. As one
of God s
"poor relations" the most degraded
savage, the "least of His brethren," has a dis
tinction denied to the If for ten men
angels. just
God would have spared Sodom, what
mercy will
not the presence of the
God-Man, of the Catholic
Church and her sacraments, win for all
humanity,
for those even who
trample them underfoot and
revile them
For the Church is in the world as a
?
tree that rooted in the earth and whose secret

is
fibres spread far and wide. God cannot draw the

Church to Himself, but He must, in some
sense,
draw the whole world with her. She will not loose
her grip :
"
If thou wilt not forgive she says,

them,"
"then blot me out of the book of life."
But if those who do not know the visible Church

can be saved without
being actually incorporated
with her and bound to her laws, it
might seem that
such knowledge profits to make nothing, except
salvation more difficult for those to whom the
obligation is revealed. This is an objection which
might be urged against all the
sacraments, against
every additional means of light and grace. The
instructed catechumen must seek water and a
minister in order to be
regenerated; whereas the
pagan can be born again of the Holy Ghost in the
fountain of his own tears. But we must
plainly
distinguish between the amply sufficient grace for
salvation which God in His
fidelity offers to all,
and that superabundant which in His grace gene
rosity He offers to millions, though not to all.
Contrition in every case
forgives our sins in the
very moment we propose to seek absolution but ;
in the sacrament God overwhelms us with the
grace of remission,
He
puts upon us the best robe,
finger, and shoes on
and a ring on our our feet,
and us, and rejoices over us with His
banquets
angels. To every soul God supplies the daily bread
of good thoughts and good desires, but in the
Eucharist he satiates the hungry with the Bread
of Angels, and causes the chalice of the thirsty to
overflow and inebriate. To all in every religion
He reveals Himself as God the rewarder of them
that seek Him, but in the Catholic revelation these
broken lights" gathered up and intensified

are
"
into one steady ray of pure truth and the corn that
;
is meted in simple sufficiency to some is given to

us in full measure, pressed down, shaken together,
and running over.
Moreover, the sacraments are said to work their
effect ex opere operate, i.e., theirs is an effect produced
in us by an external agency, not by ourselves;
although as a condition they demand a certain

of the soil which
receptivity, a certain disposition
the or a hundred-fold.
multiplies yield thirty, sixty,
That their effect is not directly, but only indirectly
ex opere operantis and measured by our own industry,
may seem to be but little advantage or gain yet ;
it is no small gain that instead of our waiting

on
God, as it were for the troubling of the waters, God
should wait us, ready to serve us with
His
upon
graces as often as approach the
we choose to
sacraments and dispose ourselves to receive them.
Herein God has opened for us the fountains of
salvation, that we may approach and
draw living
water when we Whosoever will, let him

will :
"
come and drink freely."

Dare we then, even on these prudential grounds,
and putting aside all question of the sovereign and
universal authority of the Church over every soul
upon earth, and of her commission to compel men

to enter into her fold so far as Divine jurisdiction
can compel them dare we then refuse such a
;
proffer of spiritual wealth, dare we hope even for

the bare sufficiencies of salvation if we wilfully
neglect this call to higher things ?
Once more whether we regard ourselves as

isolated units, or as members of the body, our
union with the visible Church enables us both to
get more and to give more than would be otherwise
at all possible. For viewing the Church ministerially,
as even Nonconformists view her, it is evident that
by her ministration and government, and by the
co-operation of our fellow-members, we are enlight
ened, guided, helped, prayed for, encouraged, and
secure all the advantages which the individual gains
in a society and loses in isolation, and are, there
fore, able serve and praise God with a fuller
to
personal service. We profit by the accumulated

experience of multitudes transmitted and added to
from generation to generation we are the inheritors
;
of all that is meant by the Catholic tradition so far

as we are capable of appropriating it. There is
all the difference that exists between genius which
has to teach itself everything from the beginning,

and that which enters into the labours of others
and starts where they have left off.
Still more as members of a living body do we

participate in those special blessings and graces
which God bestows on the Church collectively,,
seeing as He does the image of the Blessed Trinity,,
the Many in One, set forth in the society as it can
never be set forth in the unit How good and ;
"
pleasing it is for brethren to dwell together in

unity
. . . for there the Lord hath promised His blessing
and life for evermore." And as happens analogously
in the kingdoms of this world, there are benefits
accruing to the faithful collectively in which even the
wickedest and most unworthy members partake in
such sort that their membership is to them a source
of graces otherwise denied them.
many Further
there a collective praise and service which we
is
can give to God or participate in giving as parts

and factors of a joint result, and which is wholly
out of the power of those who praise and serve God
singly and in isolation. The very same melody
receives anew meaning and richness when sung in
concert with others. And there is a collective
prayer where many are gathered together as one,
in His Name, a
prayer which the Holy Ghost offers
by the lips of the Universal Church in her liturgy,
whose fruit is applied to our soul as often as we
join in it or unite our intention with it.
All these considerations,

and others that might
be adduced, make it evident that membership with
the visible Church is the condition and occasion of
innumerable helps and graces otherwise inaccessible;,
and that to neglect wilfully such an offer of greater
salvation would be an act, not only of rebellion
against Divine authority, but also of presumption,

meriting the forfeiture of all other but the most
ordinary and barely sufficient means.
v.
"
For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not
of yourselves, for it is the gift of God." Ephes. ii. 8.
We may now inquire for our own sakes rather

than for theirs, how it comes to pass that so many
of our fellow-Christians, who are to all appearances
in perfect good faith, feel themselves in no way
obliged to submit themselves to the Catholic Church :
for we are bound

justice innot to speak of
all
charity to find every excuse for them before we

dare to condemn in our minds those whom perhaps
God acquits as more faithful to their little light,
than we to our abundance.
Why we ourselves believe is not a question

whose discussion can interest us much more than
a discussion of our own identity. We may dispute
and deny the proofs usually alleged, but our belief
is not shaken because our
analysis of its origin is
unsuccessful. A dogma is simply the skeleton of
a living concrete reality which it but outlines and
formulates and the same might be said of the
;
array of reasons we put forth for our recognition

of the Church s claims. Our faith in her is the
effect ofan impression produced on our mind and
heart by her whole concrete reality. can never We
make another see what we see, or feel what we feel,
by any verbal description however elaborate and
44 o THE MYSTICAL BODY.
detailed. To the Catholic born and bred, the

claim of any other body to represent and continue
the work of Christ is unthinkable to the convert
;
ifhe has really grasped the point at issue it is a

dream sincerely accepted for truth, until set side
by side with the facts of daylight when one wakens.
For this very cause we are often indifferent,
unsympathetic and harsh in our controversy; we
are careless in our reasons, as the consciousness of
certainty always makes men, we are inaccurate and
slovenly in our answers, or else we are simply
impatient of all discussion, feeling the hopeless
inadequacy of language in the matter we ourselves ;
see, touch, and taste, but to convey that experience

to others seems simply an interminable task.
First of all let us remember
that in the expression
of his reasons for not believing, the non-Catholic
isas much embarrassed by this inadequacy of logic
and languages as we are. His assigned reasons
are at best the merest skeleton of that subjective
impression about the Church by which he is really
influenced in his heart. Very often they are not even
so much they have really no connection with it
;
whatever, if they do not actually belie it. may We

refute every reason he can put forth without touch
ing the one true reason which he does not know

how to disentangle or express.
would betray a lamentable ignorance of the
It
principles governing Divine election and favour, not

to say of patent and notorious facts, to suppose that
our seeing what so many are blind to is due in any
degree to superior intellectual acumen or to more
THE MYSTICAL BODY. 44I
extensive information and erudition on our

part;
or even to our superior fidelity to grace and
light.
Though the Church has always had intellect and
learning on her side in greater or less degree, she
has never had a monopoly, and there is
undoubtedly
more arrayed against her than is with her. God
has chosen the foolish and weak to confound the
wise and strong and it is so far as we are content
;
to throw in our lot with that majority that we

receive or retain the gift of faith. Nor are there
many of us who have not been far more
unfaithful
to grace and light than some whom God has left
outside the fold of Peter. Our faith is obviously
matter for thanksgiving but not for boasting ; it is
not of works but of the gift of God.

But if the Church
is conspicuous as a
city set on
a hill, how
are they excusable who fail to see it ?
Truly the Church is conspicuous and the features
that distinguish her are broadly marked and
recog
nizable by all. Were they subtle, microscopic,
elusive, ambiguous did they depend for their
;
existence on niceties of history and

exegesis and
criticism were it needful to be versed in the
;
theology of valid orders, or to be competent to

judge the precise requirements of unity, catholicity,
sanctity, apostolicity conceptions which theologians
discuss and elaborate
interminably then indeed the
trumpet might be said to give an uncertain sound.
But we know it is not so, and that the evidence of
the Church is like the evidence of the sun to those
that have eyes. But eyes they must have, and here
we come to the solution of our problem. For if
we search for some object, and are not clear as to

the nature and appearance of what we are searching
for, it may confront us time after time and be
passed over not because its characteristics are

;
obscure, but because we do not know what to look

for. And so it is that the distinctive characteristics
of the Catholic Church are manifest to all, friends
and foes alike, but the latter find in them evidence
of her falsehood, while the former find in them
evidence of her truth.
For example, it is natural that every great
organization for universal and spiritual ends should
be brought to the birth by preaching for it is the ;
embodiment and organ of an idea, and this idea

must be first preached to the ear, received in the
mind, and embraced by the affections of many,
before can take shape in an institution or society.
it
So it was with the Christian Church. It is not,

therefore, wonderful that millions who have been
educated to believe that the Catholic Church
pretends to be the unchanged representative of the
Church as seen in the pages of the New Testament,
a Church whose worship consisted of simple
eucharistic suppers, of informal, and even disorderly
prayings and prophesyings, of continual open-air
preaching and exhortation ;
a Church as yet soft
and formless, innocent of all definition in disci
pline or dogma or ritual, altogether in its general

exterior aspect far more like Methodism, or the
Salvation Army, than anything else it is not ;
wonderful that looking about for such a Church

as this they should fail to recognize it in the
Catholic Church, with her elaborate ecclesiastico-

political organization, her complex
and definite liturgy
and canon law and dogma, her world-wide extension
and authoritative government.
They seek a tender
sapling, and they find a gnarled, weather-beaten
oak they seek a babe in its crib, and
;
they find a
man on his cross.
We, on the other hand, seek a body that
claims to carry on the work of Him who
came
to teach not the
few but the millions, not the
learned but the
to teach them, not the
rude;
science of earth or the
philosophy of man, but
the wisdom of God and the
mysteries of Heaven ;
and who, therefore, of

necessity taught, not as the
scribes by
reasonings and discussion, but with
authority as God, claiming the obedience of the
mind, not its patronage; the assent of faith, not the
critical
approval of reason.
Lookingfor such a Church, our own
eyes,
and friend and foe alike lead us to Rome. Her
exclusiveness and dogmatism is at once
conspicuous
and altogether distinctive. It is to us the mark or
characteristic of Christ, to others of anti-Christ.
But all alike allow that it is notorious and
peculiar
to Rome alone. Other bodies claim to have the
true interpretation of
Christianity ; for such a claim
is their raison d etre.
But there is some modesty
in their claim they do not pretend to be
;
infallibly
right; they are open to conviction; they allow
outsiders a right to their But Rome alone
opinion.
claims living to be not
infallibility, only true, but
certainly true, and alone true.
For this reason all antagonists join hands against

her whoever else is right she is infallibly wrong.
;
She is the Ishmael of Christendom a sign spoken ;
against by all. And while this very concursus of

opprobrium is for so many a conclusive proof of her
imposture, it is for us the very impress of the
stigmata of Christ.
But perhaps the commonest error is that which
leads men to look for such a congregation of saints
as we find in existence during the first days of the
Church s infancy before the tares had yet begun
;
to make themselves noticeable to any great extent ;
to seek for the characteristics of the invisible

Church in the visible. They forget, if they ever
knew, that though the one Spirit which dwells in,
quickens, and unites the members of the visible
Church, as the source of its doctrinal light and of
its sacramental grace, is unfailing and imperishable,
yet it is as treasure stored in earthen and corruptible

vessels it is as leaven buried in an unleavened mass,
;
slowly and with difficulty asserting its influence ;
and transforming into its own nature alien matter

which cannot be leavened if separated from the
mass. Christ surely was explicit enough on
this point, to take away all surprise at the
weakness or wickednessjof the members of the
Church of whatever degree or dignity.
visible He
came as the friend of publicans and sinners, to call,
not the just, but sinners to repentance. are We

not shocked to find the inmates of a hospital ailing
and weakly and the Church is little better than a
;
hospital for sick and wounded souls, in whose midst

Christ sits down daily to meat. In this she

emulates the patience as she shares the reproach of
her Master. Those who come to her she will in no
wise cast out and
ever she excommunicates, it
;
if
is only lest the disease spread from one to many,
or else for the chastisement and ultimate healing of

the sinner himself. While there is life there is
hope. However dead and fruitless, yet until it is

severed from the vine, the branch may yet be
quickened; "although he hath sinned yet he hath
not denied the Father, the Son, and the Holy
1
Ghost."
Much schism has originated in pharisaic scandal

and a perverse application of the argument from
fruits and many still are kept outside the fold
;
because they are offended that the following of the

Church is so like the following which gathered
round her Master when the righteous stood apart
and drew close their garments from defiling contact.
Let us then be sure that if men of intelligence,
learning, and good faith, hold aloof from us, it is
simply because that of the countless aspects under
which Christ and His Church can be viewed, they
have not yet caught that one in which their resem
blance or rather identity is so unmistakable. It is
ever so with the seeing of likeness between face
and face,what is missed by one is self-evident to
another. Out of thousands there is some one angle
to be taken, and the light breaks upon us irre
sistibly. We might call it chance were it not rather
the free gift of God donum Dei est.
1
Commendation of the Dying.
Faith is the work of a massive impression pro

duced by a concrete personality. We recognize, we
believe, we trust, we love not in obedience to
arguments and reasonings but to a perception ;
which wakes a response in every corner of our soul.

We follow the Church for the same kind of reason
that Peter of Galilee followed Christ. Had he
been asked his reasons he would wisely have said :
Come and see

"
and yet many who came, saw

;
"
not, for their eyes were dim.
Perceptions whole like that he sought

To clothe, reject so pure a work of thought
As language thought may take perceptions place
;
But hardly coexist in any case,

Being its mere presentment, of the whole
By parts the simultaneous and the sole,
;
By the successive and the many. 1

No man has ever yet uttered the wholej the real
reason of his belief or of his unbelief. Therein he
is alone with God, to his own Maker he standeth
"
or falleth." Whatever be the happy arrangement

"
of theses," writes a French Jesuit, a propos of

Huysman s En Route, "according to which the
theologian studies the preambles of faith, and plans
a route for that abstract soul which he syllogizes
about, the subject upon whom the touch of Divine
grace is working makes little account of these
scientific tactics. He
drawn by the cords of is
Love and by that bait which suits his particular

appetite if he will but yield himself to follow and ;
the efficacity which the co-operation of his obedient

will lends to grace, suffices to sanctify and
justify
1
R. Browning, Sordello.
him without inquiring for a moment whether or not

he has numbered his steps in strict agreement with
the theses or making sure that he has fallen into the
Church s motherly arms according to all the pre
scribed And by way of illustration the
rules."
1
criticquotes, without approving in every detail,

the words in which the hero gives expression to
some of the features of the Church by which he was
most strongly drawn back to her bosom :
not then strange this invariable weakness

"
Is it
on the part of defunct heresies ? All of them from

the very first have had the flesh enlisted in their
service. Logically and naturally they should have
triumphed for they pretended to allow men and
women follow their passions without condem
to
nation, and even, in the case of Gnostics, with
profit to their sanctity, doing honour to God by the

vilest excesses.
"
And what has become them ? They haveof

all gone to the bottom, while the Church, so rigid
in this matter, is still to the fore, whole and entire.
She commands the body to submit and the soul to
suffer, and, contrary to all likelihood, human nature
and sweeps aside as so much filth, the
listens to her
seductive pleasures which present themselves for
acceptance."
And again :
"
Is not this vitality which the Church preserves,

in spite of unfathomable stupidity of her
the
children, something quite decisive ? She has
survived the alarming folly of her clergy (Quoi qiCon
J. Pacheu, S.J., De Dante & Verlaine.
1
pense, says the critic, de cette assertion incivile et

outree, elk a sa valeur), she has not even been slain
by the blunders and witlessness of her defenders 1
That is truly wonderful

"
Temper the irony, and this is only what St. Paul

confesses and glories in when he says See your "
vocation, brethren, that there are not many wise

according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many
noble but the foolish things of the world hath God
;
chosen that He may confound the wise and the ;
weak things of the world hath God chosen that He

may confound the strong and the base things of ;
the world and the things that are contemptible hath

God chosen and the things that are not, that He
1
might bring to nought things that are."
1
i Cor. i. 2628.
APPENDIX.
NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN."
IT may not be amiss to state a little more clearly

the Christian doctrine of
pain, which holds a position
midway between two erroneous views. According
to the hedonist and the
stoic, pain is never in itself
a means or cause of
good, be that good pleasure
or virtue. In this limited finite existence of
ours,
however, inseparably annexed to the means
it is
by which happiness is reached. In other words,

bitterness, we are told, is never in itself medicinal,
but being attached to other
properties which are
medicinal, it must be endured by those who desire
health for themselves it must be inflicted those
;
by
who desire health for others. these
Thus, if
thinkers profess any sort of
Christianity, they regard
Christ s mission of
redemption as a mission pri
marily for the relief of suffering. If He calls on us
to take up our cross and follow Him to
Calvary
and hang beside Him there, it is not because suffer
ing is useful, but because it is inevitable if W3 would
eventually minimize suffering for ourselves and for
others. And therefore, though suffering is useless,
sufferance is good, i.e., being able to face suffering
and fight it with a view to its extinction. Christ,
in their view, is the
exemplar philanthropist, who
DD
450 APPENDIX.
found joy in suffering, end that others

for the
might not suffer, who burdens and
bore their
griefs and sorrows, and imposed a like altruism on

His disciples, as the Great Precept of the New
Law. He bids the rich give to the poor, and those
that have to those that have not. He promises life
to those who
devote themselves to the relief of pain
and suffering, who feed the hungry, and clothe the
naked, and minister to the needy. If this, then,
be the true spirit of Christ, is it not evident that
though it is good for us to be able and willing to
suffer when necessary, yet the necessity of suffering
is itself something to be deplored, something
abnormal, irregular, the fruit of sin and disorder
;
that it is key which simply makes

like the rust of a
it difficult to turn it in the lock, and in no possible
way helps to that effect that suffering makes the

;
food and medicine of life bitter, but is not itself

nourishing or medicinal the great obstacle
;
that it is
to holiness and goodness, and that were it not for

the difficulty and pain to be encountered, the whole
world would be virtuous and happy ?
There is so much plausibility in this presentment
of Christianity as to deceive at times even those
whose spiritual instincts are truer than their reason
ing, and who in attempting to formulate their religion
do it scant justice.
Certain, indeed, it is that pain is never an
ultimate end that God never delights in suffering,
;
even when He Himself inflicts it or wills it to be

inflicted ;
that in some equivalent way, His love
for the least of His creatures makes their pains His
45I
own, even as the father may suffer more than the

child whom
he chastises, yet shrinks not from
doing
what is for the child s greater good.
True it is also, that Christ went about
relieving
pain and sorrow, and that He requires like com
passion from all His disciples; that He is the
physician of the body no less than of the soul ;
that He cares for the

temporal as well as for the
eternal for the State as well as for the Church
;
;
for the multitudes as well as for individuals.

This ,
aspect of Christianity is only too often ignored by

those who would divorce
grace and nature, Heaven
and earth, Christianity and civilization, and set
them at enmity one with another. No man need
pretend to love God who has no pity for the
hungry.
This is true, but it is not the whole truth.
Seek ye first God s
Kingdom and its justice." This
justice the only supreme and
is
unqualified good, by
which all else is to be measured and estimated.
Other things are to be sought or avoided
according
as they help or hinder the one
thing needful.
Nothing is absolute evil for man but what violates
his humanity, the
higher life of his reason. Were
he mere animal, then pain would be an
unquali
fied misfortune, and in no possible way a good
or cause of good though possibly it might be
;
a condition of good. But belonging as he also

does to the order of the Eternal and
Absolute,
and finding his highest perfection and happiness
in the love of truth and right, of God and of
God s cause a love which is exerted, and thereby
45 2
APPENDIX.
strengthened, in suffering and self-denial, temporal

and transitory crosses are evil only in a relative and
conditional sense, i.e., just so far as they hinder his
higher and eternal But they may as often,
life.
perhaps more often, be not merely the condition

but the very cause and direct means of his advance
in the Kingdom of God and justice; not merely
its
something tolerated as inseparably annexed to the

means, but themselves the means, the very bitter
ness itself, and not merely the bitter thing, being
medicinal. In a word, suffering is in itself good
and useful, though not an ultimate and final good.
The pain of the lance does the patient no good,
and so perhaps we employ narcotics. But the pain
of the lash does the criminal good, nor has philan
thropy so far insisted on administering chloroform
to him.
It seems, then, that
"
Humanitarianism
"
makes
what is commonly understood as philanthropy the
chief end of Christ s teaching and example; whereas
but
Catholicity looks upon it as necessary indeed,
as secondary and subordinate. Where pain is an
inseparable condition, still more where it is a direct
cause and means of greater good, it must be
embraced, not under protest, but with the love due
to that which in itself is good and useful which, ;
though repugnant to feeling, is welcome to reason

and faith.
.No doubt there is a superstitious pain-worship
connected with dualist religions, which, as they
also
acknowledge an ultimate principle of evil, so
do they view pain as pleasing for its own sake to
NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN." 453
a cruel deity; or rather, because it tends to the

destruction of the animal body, and of separate
personal existence, which are regarded as of evil
origin. Christian asceticism rests on no such
foundation, but maintains that pain itself purifies
the heart, as fire purifies gold.
For the heart purified by detachment.
is Its
purity perfect liberty from all that impedes its

is its
complete subjection to the Divine love, and reason,

and will. Such subjection requires that it should be
able to endure the pain of leaving what it likes, of
embracing what it abhors a power which may be
possessed to an indefinite
degree. Apart from
supernatural intervention, the strength of Divine
love in the soul, like every other habit, is increased
by every act in advance of previous acts in point of
intensity; by lesser acts it is sustained up to a
corresponding point of capacity, but no further. It
is not by the removal but by the graduated increase
of obstacles that Divine love is exercised and
strengthened not by the extinction but by the
;
mastery of rebellious feeling. Every new victory

of Divine love over such rebellion is a new degree
of liberty acquired, a further purification from
hampering affections, another tie to earth and the
lower life loosened.
As resistance draws out physical exertion and
strengthens our muscles, so pain increases our
moral strength, which is prized, not because to be
able to endure pain is useful (that were a vicious
circle), but because our perfection lies in loving
God with our whole heart and strength, and
454 APPENDIX
drawing out every inch of our capacity in that

respect. Normally, it is only by pain that this can
be effected. 1 A life of pleasure unbroken by pain is
in the moral order like a life of absolute bodily
inactivity. It is the explicit teaching of Christianity

that a man is sent into this world for no other end
but to perfect himself in the love of God and of
every form and aspect of Divine goodness and if ;
that love can be perfected and uttered only through

labour and pain and suffering, it is hard to see why
this should be very much pleasanter than Purga
life
tory, where the process which death finds imperfect

is taken up and finished according to somewhat the
same method. There is, indeed, true joy and peace

mid the purgatorial pangs and if there is any ;
solid joy and peace on earth it is that which the

saints have known in the midst of their many
tribulations, and which the world could neither
give nor take away. To say that life is but an
Needless to say we speak of the natural order of things such

1
as prevails now in consequence of the forfeiture of the preternatural

through Adam s fall, and would have prevailed always had man
not been created in Paradise. Even there man was not to be
spiritually perfected, he could not make grace his own until it was,
so to say, burnt into his soul by that mysterious temptation to
which he, with all his advantages and helps, succumbed. We may
be sure that the trial on which the destiny of the whole human
race depended was one which could be borne only at the cost of
great suffering, since temptation implies suffering whether in
the way of abstinence or of endurance. Thus the law of sanctifi-
cation through suffering seems to be saved everywhere. As to the
process by which the soul of the baptized infant is developed
intellectually and morally and makes manifest the graces latent in
it, we know too little to be certain that even here we have an
exception.
inchoative purgatory may sound pessimistic to the

thoughtless, but, in truth, it is very kindest optimism,
the one answer that fits the riddle. Not, indeed,
that there any continuance
is of probation or increase
of grace after death, but that the seeds of love here
sown are there watered and matured, and spread
their shoots and fibres to every corner of our
spiritual being it is a, work, not of development as

;
here on earth, but of simple evolution.

If once we accept the probation theory of life, it
ought no longer to surprise us to find that the soul

is so often on the rack, that every circumstance
and condition of its existence is devised either to

unite it more closely to God or else to separate it
from God, the latter purposes being seemingly

contrary but really subordinate to the former,
insomuch as the greater the force of the strain that
would drag us away from God, i.e., from faith, or
hope, or charity, or justice, or purity, or truth, or
any form of Divine goodness, the more firmly do we
need to cling to Him and the stronger grows our
grasp, are
if we
but faithful in clinging.
If the practice of Divine love were not painful, it
would never take root or grow. No doubt it is the
very idea of virtue that good actions should become
easy ; yet this is only because the habit of enduring
pain has become deep-seated. "Easy" is not "pain
less." The pain is felt as much as ever, but the
feeling disregarded and promptly defied, owing to
is
the strength of the counter-motive. Just as the

strong man delights to exert his strength in order
both to give expression to it, and to maintain and
456 APPENDIX.
increase it, so the love of God, when it is

strong,
delights to give expression to itself, to exercise and
perfect itself. The giant will not be satisfied to
beat the air, but looks for something that will resist
him, and if he finds no obstacle will make one ; and
the lover will not be satisfied with unresisting, easy
tasks, but looks for something painful and hard ;
and if he finds it not to hand will devise it for

himself. The
Christian ascetic naturally, instinc
tively, reasonably (always supposing it be not to the
hurt of greater good) takes to self-sought austerities
simply and only to express, and incidentally therein
to strengthen, his love of God, his sorrow for sin.
In this he but co-operates in the dispensation
whereby God Himself uses pain and suffering
directly as a means for the spiritual formation of
His saints.
In the mere fact of practising and inculcating
fast and vigil, Christ our Saviour has allowed and
taught asceticism nor is there any difference in

;
kind between His fast in the desert and the

severest self-inflicted austerities of Catholic saints.
It quite immaterial whether we afflict ourselves
is
by hunger, or thirst, or wakefulness, or scourge,

or haircloth, if once we pass the boundary of mere
temperance and uphold the lawfulness and the duty
of fasting.
Christ s primary mission with respect to the
sufferings and sorrows of life was, not to relieve
them, but to teach men to bear them, to value
them, to thank God for them. There are two
ways of dealing with difficulties and trials by
changing ourselves or by changing our surround

ings by running away from hardships or by
;
adapting ourselves to them and nerving ourselves

to bear them. There is no question as to which is
the wisest course. If we fly from one cross it is
only to fall into the arms of another. Go where
we will we carry ourselves with us, the source of
most of our trouble. Until we change ourselves, no
change of circumstances will avail. Imaginatio locorum
et mutatio multos
fefellit, says a Kempis many have
been deluded by the imaginary advantages of a
change. Men are constantly laying the blame of their
own faults on their surroundings; ever fancying that
they would be perfectly happy in some other place ;
ever keen-eyed to their present grievances and

prospective advantages ;
ever blind to their present
advantages and prospective grievances always loth
;
to face the inevitable truth, that life is a warfare

upon earth ;
thatessentially a cross which must
it is
be borne, whether willingly or unwillingly that ;
"there is no other to and to true internal

way life
peace but the way of the Holy Cross and of daily

mortification. Walk where you will, seek what you
will yet you
;
will find no higher way above, no safer
way below than the way of the Holy Cross. Arrange

and order everything after your own likings and
fancies, and yet you will always find something that
you have to suffer, whether willingly or unwillingly,
and thus you will always find the Cross. You will
have to put up either with bodily pain or with
spiritual troubles. At one time you will feel
abandoned by God at another you will be tried by
;
458 APPENDIX.
your neighbour and, what is worse, you will often be

;
troublesome to yourself. Nor yet can you be released

or relieved by any remedy or comfort, but needs
must bear it as long as God wills. . . . Run where
you you cannot escape, for wherever you go you
will,
carry yourself along with you, and so everywhere

you will always find yourself. Turn where you will,
above or below, within or without, yet in every
corner you will find the Cross and everywhere you ;
willneed to exercise patience if you want to possess

inward peace and deserve an everlasting crown. If
you carry the Cross willingly, it will carry you if ;
you carry it unwillingly, you make a burden for

yourself and weight yourself still more ; and yet,
bear it you must. If you cast off one cross you will
surely find another, and perhaps a heavier one. Do

you imagine you are going to escape what no man
ever yet escaped ? . . . You are sore mistaken if
you expect anything else but to suffer trials, for the

whole of this earthly life is full of miseries and hedged
round with crosses. Make up your mind that you
will have to endure many adversities and all sorts of
inconveniences in this wretched life, for so it will
be with you wherever you are, and so you will surely
find it wherever you lie hid. When you shall
. . .
have got so far that tribulation is sweet to you and

savours of Christ, then indeed it will be well with
you, and you will have discovered paradise upon
earth. As long as suffering is an evil in your eyes,
and you try to run away from it, so long will you
be unhappy and whithersoever you fly, the need of
;
further flight will still follow you. But if you settle

459
down to the
namely, to
inevitable, suffering and
dying, things will quickly mend and you will find
peace. . . Had
. there been anything better or more
useful for men s souls than suffering,
surely Christ
would have taught it by word and
example ! . .
And, therefore, let this be the final conclusion of all

our study and investigation, that it is of
necessity
throughmany tribulations that we are to enter the
Kingdom of God." 1
In short, the Gospel has no belief in the
perfecti
bility of human life here on earth. If suffering be
the true, unmitigated evil, then is
Christianity
frankly pessimistic. Suffer we must on our cross,
whether on the right hand of Christ or on the
left; whether with faith, patience, and humility,
or with unbelief, blasphemy, and proud indigna
tion. Nor can there be any question as to who
suffers more, he who makes the Cross not merely
a basis of certain but even an exercise
hope,
and expression of present love, or he who finds
in it not even the medicine, but the
very poison
of life.
We have already insisted that the good which

positivism seeks to realize for humanity is not the
ultimate good; nor is the evil it would
mitigate
a real, final evil. But we may go further with
some plausibility, and urge that its aim is not only
mistaken, but impossible that it cheers us with
;
hopes which can never be realized, that as every

drop which the sun absorbs from the ocean comes
back to it again sooner or later, so the efforts of
1
Imitation, ii. 12.
4 6o APPENDIX.
philanthropy to drain the sea of man s sorrows are

futile and unavailing.
It vain for us to kick against the goad of
is
suffering, for thereby we only feel it the more. We

are comforted by promises of a golden age, or an
age of gold,when poverty shall be no more. Yet
He perchance knew the nature of human society
better who said: "The poor you shall always have
with you,"
and in so saying He may have
enounced,
not merely a fact of the future, but an iron law of
life. If so, then as long as the world lasts
the poor will always be in the majority and the
destitute will be not a few. Indeed, it seems that
the pursuit of social wealth is like the pursuit of
truth every step a new and wider horizon opens
at
out on our view. To solve ten problems is to
suggest a hundred not dreamt of before and so, ;
to raise the standard of comfort and enjoyment is

to multiply men s needs and make the conditions of
their temporal happiness more difficult to realize.
Let the wealth of the country increase as it will,
yet the amount of discontent and suffering caused
by poverty will be relatively much the same in one
age as in another. The capacities for pleasure and
for pain grow pari passu, and therefore the increase
of social wealth does not lessen poverty, but only
changes the standard. For poverty is something
to a great extent relative. While society lasts there
will always be inequality in possessions. As fast as
we draw outsiders within the circle of economic
comfort, others will be ready to take their place.
For the more bread there is, the more mouths will
there be to eat it ;
and if competitors multiply, the
number of those weaklings is multiplied who are
pushed to the wall in the struggle, and whose lot is
poverty, if not destitution.

The stimulus to all progress is discontent with
existing conditions, that is, misery of some kind or

another and therefore those who make material
;
progress an end in itself, who fix no final point

beyond which comfort may not go and where pro
gress must cease, make discontent the normal lot
of mankind.
Doubtless I shall be told that if we are to seek
such "want-begotten rest," if we are to lower our
standard of comfort to the minimum, in the first
place we shall be relatively no happier, since with
the contraction of our needs the means of satisfying
them will proportionately dwindle down and then, ;
that we shall
simply sacrifice the fulness of a life
where our capacities for enjoyment are developed
all
to the utmost, for a lower and feebler vitality which

suffers less, only because it lives less and enjoys
less ;
that if extreme
our doctrine were carried to its
conclusion, we should (as Buddhism does) aim at

the extinction of all desire and being.
This objection is valid if we accept the tenets
of that hedonism which consciously or unconsciously
pervades the thought of our day. For if indeed
enjoyment be our highest good, then the only
is as
practical, though perhaps insoluble, question
to whether or in this
pleasure pain preponderates
mortal life. If pleasure, then life should be sought
in its greatest possible fulness; ifpain, then life
462 APPENDIX.
should be shunned, stifled, extinguished. The ancient

East has learnt to take the bitter view the sanguine ;
West, with the buoyancy of comparative youth and

inexperience, can still find hope in life apart from
God.
therefore, pleasure were the last good, and
If,
pain the last ill, it might well be questioned whether

the joys that culture and civilization bring to the
majority are not more than cancelled by the
attendant sorrows, and whether stagnation, numb
ness and sensibility were not the better wisdom,
and Nirvana our best hope.
None perhaps ever entered more fully, more
purely into the beat that the highest culture can
offer, than he who spoke not only in his own name,
but in the name of that unique civilization he repre
sented when he said For I believe that if one
:
"
had to compare that night in which he slept so

soundly as not to be troubled by any dream what
soever, with all the other nights and days of his
whole life, and had to confess how many days or
nights he had passed more pleasantly and sweetly,
I believe that neither the
king on his throne, nor
1
the beggar at his gate, could count many such."
If, however, we deny that enjoyment is the chief

good, or more than a subordinate condition of our
highest and truest life, to be used or left as reason
shall dictate ;
if we perceive that when sought for
its own sake becomes a tyrannical and insatiable
it
greed, a source of chronic discontent and misery ;
that it tends to absorb all the interest and energy

1
Apol. Socmtis.
which would otherwise go to the quest of God, and

of divine good, then it is no longer a concession to
pessimism or Buddhism to advocate a simplifying
of the conditions of life in the interests of a truer
and nobler Christianity has no quarrel
culture.
with civilization or culture as such, but only with
a false civilization which would usurp the place
which belongs to the Kingdom of God and its
justice. It not only allows but enjoins the further
ance of all arts that minister to life, so long as
due order be observed, and the lower be restrained
by the higher, and nothing be sought without
measure or restraint, save that which is highest of
all. It defers to the claims of the body, of the
passions and affections, of the aesthetic faculty and

the imagination, yet always with the knowledge
that restraint is the only antiseptic, and that when
Nature breaks loose from the yoke of Grace, the

liberty she seeks proves to be bondage, degradation,
corruption.
But it is in justice, and in the inner Kingdom
of God that we our imperishable
are to place
treasure of happiness, which no suffering in other
respects can touch save superficially, leaving the
soul s depths in imperturbable calm. This happi
ness, like the air and sunshine, is within the
reach of all; and the supply being unlimited,
there no struggle of competition, no necessary
is
poverty or destitution. In the spiritual soul, with

its capacities for light and love, men possess
an often unsuspected treasure of happiness,
an instrument from which skilled fingers can at
464 APPENDIX.
pleasure draw sweetest music. Christ tells us that

our bliss depends more upon what we are, than upon
our circumstances that these latter receive their
;
form and meaning from the soul that the eye sees;
what it brings with it, the power of seeing; that it

is more blessed to play an indifferent part
nobly
than to play a noble part indifferently ; that the
Kingdom within us, and consists in that deep-
is
down, unbroken peace of the heart which the world

can neither give nor take away.
We are not then enemies to material progress
because we refuse to recognize it as an end in itself;
or because we forbid men to build all their hopes
upon it, and throw all their energies into it or ;
because we refuse to believe that on the whole it

can ever seriously alter the relative proportions of
pain and pleasure in this world. On the contrary,
as nature in general is saved and perfected by its
subjection to grace and heavenly wisdom, so within
the many kingdoms of nature each lower realm is
best saved by subjection to that above it nor can ;
any civilization escape corruption when the lower

life is sought
luxuriously and extravagantly at the
expense of the higher; when the bulk of social
wealth goes, not to the necessities, but to the
superfluities of the body, while the soul is left
languishing.
And if the
predictions of a future terrestrial
paradise consequent on the growth and distribution
of wealth are somewhat shortsighted, the same must
be said of those which point to the coming extermina
tion of disease and the prolongation of life through
NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN: 465
the progressive improvement of medical science.

For if the art of healing finds new remedies and
methods, it only means that many weaklings are

born, and many survive whom Nature with rough
kindness would have withheld or eliminated from
the number of the living and thus the proportion ;
of those who can exist comfortably under improved

medical science to those whose life is a burden
to them, is about the same as before.
As for the far greater amount of human grief and
sorrow which owes its birth to sin and selfishness,
temptation and perverse free-will, it is hard to see
how the most sanguine philanthropist can persuade
himself that any diminution has been realized or is
to be hoped for and while death remains (as for
;
such faithless thinkers it must remain) "
the King of
Terrors," the extinction of all they live for, and a
sword of sorrow to loving survivors, it is vain to
indulge in dreams of an earthly paradise from which
all pain and sorrow is to be weeded out, and where
comfort, if not luxury, shall be the unbroken lot of

all. In flying from the Cross, humanity, with out
stretched arms, is flying from its own shadow.
Man is born for travail, as the sparks fly upwards.
His upon earth is a warfare not a peaceful
life ;
paradise. Cur quczris quietem, says a Kempis, cum

natus sis ad labor em What business have you "
to expect rest, since you were born for labour and

conflict ?
"
Man that is born of woman hath but a

short time to live, and is full of misery. This is
the iron law
"
"
of our nature, shirk it how we

will, Furca expellas tamen usque vecurret. Against this
EE
466 APPENDIX.
tide of suffering, Christian, neo-Christian, and non-

Christian philanthropy, each in obedience to the
deepest and noblest instincts of the soul, casts up
barriers of sand, to retard its advance here and
there, or to break the force of its waves for a short
hour or so. Nor herein is the Christian inconsistent,
seeing as he does in these temporal needs and
sorrows a true, though by no means unmitigated
evil; one to be resisted, but not absolutely and
unconditionally.
Yet it is not in the efforts and fruits of such
philanthropy, not in the increased care for the
poor and sick, that we are to look for the meaning

of the Gospel proclamation, Pauperes evangelizantur
Good news for the poor." Blessed are the poor,
"
the mourners, the sick, the oppressed, the persecuted !
Blessed indeed, because their Deliverer has come.

But what manner of deliverance is Christ s ? Is it
that the poor are to grow richthe sick strong the

; ;
mourners gay and light-hearted the oppressed

;
victorious ? In that case He should rather have said :
Blessed are the rich, the prosperous, the gay. Yet

though He bade His followers sell all and give to the
poor, though He went about healing the sick, raising
the dead, consoling thewere,
mourners, as it
robbing them of their blessing, yet says, Blessed He

are you poor and He chose their lot for Himself and
;
for His Mother. Seeing that He had said it was

easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter Heaven, He might well
have given us an example of that more difficult
sanctity, by coming among us as a rich man. But
NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN,"
467
His Heart was with the

majority, to sweeten their
lot. The rich, the great, and the learned live, so to
say, on the crumbs that fall from the table God has
spread for the poor and simple, on the overflow
of the Gospel graces.
They get into Heaven by
holding on to the skirts of the poor, and by making
of them friends at court for themselves.
Therefore
our Saviour came rather to show the
poor how to
use their poverty, than to show the rich how to use
their riches to minister to the
;
many, to sanctify
their lot, to consecrate their
ragged garments by
wearing them Himself.
Who then is the true philanthropist ? Is it he
who, by the very manner in which he sympathizes
with sorrow, and labours for its
extinction, practi
cally inculcates his own belief that it is an unmiti
gated evil; who dreams fondly and bids others
dream of a future paradise on earth, who believes in
the perfectibility, not
only of the soul, but of the
conditions of a comfortable and
enjoyable existence ?
Or is it He who "knew what was in man," who
knew that poverty, sorrow, suffering, and
temptation
would always and inevitably be the lot of the
majority; who knew that there was wisdom and
love veiled under Godseeming harsh dispensation,
s
and who came not to
change it, but to explain it ;
to touch the dark clouds with

golden light not to ;
uproot the thorns which sin had sown, but to teach

our bleeding fingers to weave them into a crown
of glory for our own brow. A human comforter
would stay us with false hopes of amelio
impossible
ration ; God shows us that poverty is wealth, and
4 68 APPENDIX.
sorrow is joy, and death is life. He comes to us

with His Cross on His shoulder and says Follow :
"
Me, I am the way He has taught us, if not to

;
"
love, at least to adore the Cross to carry it, if not ;
joyfully, at least patiently.

There is no false kindness, but there is true and
tender love in the hard, stern sayings of the Gospel.
not that poverty is at
"
Good news for the poor

"
an end, but that it can be turned into gold. And so

of every sorrow and and temptation.
trial
Pseudo-Christian philanthropy would take Christ

down from the Cross. It forgets that He hung
there by His own free-will not in our stead, but ;
that we might have courage to hang beside

Him, for without the Cross there is no life.
In cruce a Kempis, in cruce salus
vita, says
"
in the Cross is life and salvation to be

Only
found." Crux, Ave! Spes unica! Can it be doubted
but that this was the secret of the conquest of the
world by Christianity? For what is strength but
courage ? and what is courage, when all is told,
but
the power of bearing pain, both moral and physical?
And what force can resist a people whom love
teaches, not merely to endure pain, but to seek it
and to revel in it ? The blood of the martyrs could
not fail to be the seed of the Church nor while the ;
true doctrine of Cross is preserved in the

the
Church as it must ever be preserved however at
times neglected and forgotten, need we fear for the
eventual victory of Christianity over a feeble-minded
world which grows daily more terrified at pain and
suffering. Doubtless the children of the Church are
NOTE TO THE "GOSPEL OF PAIN. 469
at times largely infected with the world s sentiments

in the matter, dainty members of a thorn-crowned
Head and so far the Church is feeble ; but never
while she clings to Christ crucified and His saints ;
never while she lifts the Cross for our adoration,

and hails Spes unica
it : our only hope," can the
"
secret of her invincible strength be wholly forgotten :
In hoc signo vinccs In this sign she must conquer.

Recently published, Crown 8vo, price 6s.
NOVA ET VETERA
INFORMAL MEDITATIONS
FOR TIMES OF SPIRITUAL DRYNESS.

BY
GEORGE TYRRELL, SJ.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
"These meditations are particularly graceful in form, while they are

solid in matter. Suggestiveness is their most striking quality.
. .
They
.
will also be excellent for snatches of spiritual reading at odd moments and ;
they will put a good thought into the mind which will fructify for the rest
of the day. We feel certain that this book will meet with the success
. . .
it deserves." Dublin Review.
One of the freshest and most original additions to our ascetic

literature." Irish Monthly, Aug. 1898.
The condescension of such a book as Nova et Vetera to our day of

"
business and bustle is something for which we are very grateful." Tablet.
The work is solid and helpful in every page. The scriptural quotations
"
are especially well chosen in reference to the subject under consideration

a fact which adds much to the practical worth of the book as an aid in the
spiritual life, making one realize
the nearness of Christ to the prayerful
soul." Ave Maria.
Father Tyrrell has a very attractive style, and his flow of ideas is
"
always stimulating. We can guarantee that Nova et Vetera is a book

calculated to afford pleasure and profit to every educated Catholic.
"-
Irish Catholic.
There is something in the way the meditations are submitted in the

"
form and turn of the words in which the truths they contain are expressed
--which lends them the charm of novelty and justifies the title the author
gives his book." Boston Review,
It is a book which can be opened at random with the certain result of
"
finding a gem of thought, Striking and original in its beauty.

The reflections
are all brief, but very much to the point, and of a depth which invites
thought and ensures attention." Rosary Magazine.
"As a book of meditations for those for whom it is intended it is
in a certain degree perfection. Its great charm is its freshness. "-
Catholic News.
Reflections upon many topics of great interest to men and women who
value their lives. There is nothing tiresome about the book to any
moderately serious mind." American Ecclesiastical Review.
"It is a book which one can open anywhere, with the certainty of
finding something that will afford him consolation and instruction. "-
American Catholic Quarterly.
"This book excels most volumes of meditations in literary style and
originality of thought-stimulus, and will be profitable

both to clergymen,
to religious, and to secular lay persons possessing a certain degree of
education. It will be particularly valuable to preachers, who will be sure "
to find on every page many suggestions for fresh and powerful sermons.
Church Progress.
hearty reception will be given to the result of Father Tyrrell s

"A
labours. The subjects of the meditations are naturally various, and it only
requires a glance through the index to be convinced that these subjects
are
introduced in a new and very striking manner and a closer acquaintance
;
with the meditations proves to us most emphatically that the treatment of

these subjects is likewise novel and striking. The meditations are in general
short, but they are pregnant with ideas valuable to the soul at all times, and
more particularly at seasons of spiritual dryness." Monitor.
We
may turn to its pages and light at random upon some meditation
"
that precisely suits our present state of mind and its suitability to our
;
present condition is the very reason why it is spiritually useful to us."-

Book Notices.
LONDON :
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
BX Tyrrell,George, 1861-1909.
890 Hard sayings
:
T97
H3
1898
""*

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i

PRINTED BY JOHN GRIFFIN.

[All rights reserved.]

A SELECTION OF MEDITATIONS AND STUDIES

GEORGE TYRRELL, SJ,

Durus est hie sermo, et quis potest eum audire?&quot;

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

GULIELMUS ROCHE, S.J.,

HERBERTUS CARD. VAUGHAN,

producing the present volume; and more especially

ALTHOUGH the following conferences and medita

their effect upon the reader s mind. Their purport

ways a very few of the deepest and most wide-

logician. The writer has had this danger con

tinually before his mind as something to guard

simplify, explain, and co-ordinate, it would be too

much hope that he has avoided all the errors and

extremes which usually beset such an undertaking.

drawn by a skilful hand, which will serve to bring

face if onlyit be already familiar to us by experi

ence. But an inordinate love of clearness, an over-

pressing of analogies and similitudes is a form of

rationalism very fruitful in fallacies, and not very

pride of that rationalism which inclines some to be

impatient of all ideas that are in any way obscure

and imperfectly defined ;

apply the methods and criteria of the &quot;exact

sciences&quot; to matters of a wholly different order;

For this is to forget that every new idea that enters

analyzed as to its full contents ; it is to ignore the

simple fact that our mind comprehends fully only

or a corner, but can penetrate nothing. Still more

evident is it that most of the truths relating to the

pressed in terms of anything that falls under our

round them or beyond them. Our mind is made

and the laws by which they are governed ;

Ultimates,&quot; the unchanging realities of

postulated in our every thought, our progress is

come and no further, and here shalt thou break thy

spiritual life, and ignorance of which is chiefly to

of God, as the babe is of its mother s breast ;

supernatural, be not fed by true religion, it will feed

itself on the garbage of any superstition that is

Indeed, the soul will never be raised higher or

thoroughly penetrated or comprehended, and which

revealed truths as we speak of. There is no doubt

own sake, and wraps up the simplest truisms of

to special gnosis and prophetic insight. But this

child of affectation, or self-delusion, or ignorance, no

Having thus insisted on the reasonableness and

in spiritual things, we must equally insist on

reason rightly used affords us in these matters of ;

recognizing here, as elsewhere, progress and develop

unchanging) a progress in distinctness and coher

and conceptions of a former

changing fashions of thought and speech in

the Scriptures or the Imitation, are catholic and

Thus much, then, in justification of what might

deeper mysteries of our holy religion which the

not understanded of the people.&quot;

discipline arcani the Church has learnt from her

Divine Master, whose parables were &quot;words to the

Durus est hie sermo, et quis potest eum audire?"

apply the methods and criteria of the "exact

sciences" to matters of a wholly different order;

Ultimates," the unchanging realities of

not understanded of the people."

Divine Master, whose parables were "words to the

and consolatory, and, like the "hard sayings" of

full of grace and truth."

hard sayings," and prophesied smooth things,

APPENDIX. Note to "